Didn't know how to name the thread, because of the idiocy of my problem,but i found nothing on the matter.
Here is the fact: my party recently killed a marsh giant barbarian and got among the treasure his weapon.....a large +1 ogre hook like tool the monster were using two handed (according to herolab,the weapon was a two hand even for a marsh giant).
Now the question my party asked is "Who in the nine hells will ever buy this .....thing??????"
They aren't entirely wrong i'm afraid;unless herolab assumed it was used two handed while being a one hand weapon for the giant (in which case it'll be a large weapon and a two handed for a human) it is a useless loot.
None of my PCs is going to use it, and before simply say "the local grocer'll buy it as usual" (and this'll be nonsense) i'ld like to ask how other GM deal with weird magical weapons selling, or weird magical items in general.
In case of a doubt, here it is the creature using the tool:
Giant,Marsh, Barbarian CR 9
XP 6400
Giant, Marsh Barbarian 2
CE Large Humanoid (giant)
Init +3; Senses low-light vision; Perception +11
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Defense
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AC 22, touch 13, flat-footed 18 (+3 Dex, -1 size, +9 natural, +1 dodge)
hp 124 (2d12+12d8+56)
Fort +15, Ref +7, Will +8
Defensive Abilities rock catching, uncanny dodge
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Offense
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Speed 50 ft., swimming (20 feet)
Melee +1 Ogre hook +19/+14/+9 (2d8+13/x3) and
Slam x2 (Giant, Marsh) +13 x2 (1d6+4/x2)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Special Attacks rage (10 rounds/day), rage powers (knockback [1/round]), rock throwing (120 feet)
Spell-Like Abilities Augury (3/day), Bestow Curse (3/day), Fog Cloud (3/day)
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Statistics
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Str 27, Dex 17, Con 19, Int 8, Wis 15, Cha 12
Base Atk +11; CMB +20 (+22 Sundering); CMD 34 (36 vs. Sunder)
Feats Combat Reflexes (4 AoO/round), Dodge, Improved Iron Will (1/day), Improved Sunder, Iron Will, Power Attack -3/+6, Vital Strike
Skills Acrobatics +3 (+11 jump), Fly +1, Intimidate +7, Perception +11, Stealth +5 (+13 in swamps), Survival +8, Swim +16 Modifiers +8 stealth in swamps
Languages Boggard, Giant
SQ fast movement +10
Other Gear +1 Ogre hook, You have no money!
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Special Abilities
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+8 Stealth in swamps (Ex) You gain a bonus to Stealth Checks under the listed conditions.
Combat Reflexes (4 AoO/round) Can make extra attacks of opportunity/rd, and even when flat-footed.
Fast Movement +10 (Ex) +10 feet to speed, unless heavily loaded.
Improved Iron Will (1/day) Can re-roll a Will save, but must take the second result.
Improved Sunder You don't provoke attacks of opportunity when sundering.
Knockback (1/round) (Ex) While raging, can bull rush in place of an att, dealing a little dam.
Low-Light Vision See twice as far as a human in low light, distinguishing color and detail.
Power Attack -3/+6 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Rage (10 rounds/day) (Ex) +4 Str, +4 Con, +2 to Will saves, -2 to AC when enraged.
Rock Catching (Ex) You can catch rocks that are thrown at you with a successful Reflex save.
Rock Throwing (120 feet) (Ex) You can throw big rocks. They hurt.
Swimming (20 feet) You have a Swim speed.
Uncanny Dodge (Ex) Retain Dex bonus to AC when flat-footed.
Vital Strike Standard action: x2 weapon damage dice.
Hero Lab® and the Hero Lab logo are Registered Trademarks of LWD Technology, Inc. Free download at http://www.wolflair.com
Pathfinder® and associated marks and logos are trademarks of Paizo Publishing, LLC®, and are used under license.
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Someone wealthy might buy it for a fraction of its price as a curio, assuming there is someone in the neighborhood that has money to burn and right interests.
Evil wizard might buy it to help arm his oversized minions.
Personally I decided that item creators often use reclaimed magic from other items to build new items so they might buy existing items for "disassembling".
Greetings, fellow travellers,
JJ commented on that issue (kindof) in 2007 over in the RotRL forums (search for ogre hook):
The art we've had in for ogre hooks is pretty much across the board, which is one of the problems of inventing a new weapon and illustrating it before you have solid reference handy. The hook itself is a two-handed weapon, no matter what size of monster uses it. The one described in the Player's Guide is a Medium sized version of the weapon. An ogre would wield a Large sized one (which would do 3d6 points of damage). If he had a Medium sized ogre hook, he'd take a –2 penalty on attack rolls with it, and it'd do 1d12 points of damage.
Weapon size is a pretty clunky, murky set of rules. For more details see page 113 of the PHB.
Emphasis mine.
Otherwise, I'd pretty much consider what Drejk said as the most probable ways to "dispose" of it.
Don't forget the friendly neighborhood taxidermist looking for an accessory to add to his latest work!
Ruyan.
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I've always assumed that one of the reasons evil/monstrous weapons can be sold for something like market value even in civilized areas (and without the ethical quandry of the ultimate customer being yet more frost giants or evil cults.) is that magic can be recycled.
I know that sounds silly, but let me explain: Magic items are expensive to make. Thousands of gold pieces in unspecified supplies to make swords and magic sticks. Where does all of that go? I suppose it could all be exotic herbs, minerals, and inks used in rituals, and if you're starting from scratch it would have to be. But that's a lot of mandrake root and holy water you can buy with the 25 thousand gold pieces (500 pounds of gold) it takes to make a +5 sword. Heck, buying that much in newt eyes would probably make them extinct.
But it seems like a canny wizard could transfer the enchantment off an existing magic item as a head start on his new one.
Maybe it doesn't always work (you can't necessarily build a new car starting with the bits of a go-cart), maybe it's not always a good fit (a half-charged wand of fireball probably isn't a good place to start for an amulet of natural armor, though it might work well for a flaming sword), but it can be assumed to be part of the underlying magic component economy.
This means this also doesn't require new rules: Selling magic items and buying supplies are relatively handwavey parts of the game already. If I have a +2 weapon I don't want, and sell it for 4 thousand gold pieces (market value for selling a +2 weapon), and buy 4 thousand gold pieces worth of unspecified magic bits I'm going to use making myself a staff, what's the difference versus using that weapon directly?
So next time you have to unload a +1 unholy human-bane Huge greataxe, instead of assuming it's going to go through three merchants' hands before being sold right back to some murderous group of Fire Giants, you can imagine some magical researcher is using it because the price of bat wings went up this year, as an offering to a planar bound outsider, or to throw in the arcane furnace and heat his mansion for the next 40 years.
It belongs in a museum!
Usually for things like this, though, I would make the ogre hook non-magical and raise the ogre's strength 2 points to compensate. Net effect on game mechanics is virtually nothing, and you don't have to deal with trying to offload ridiculous pieces of gear.
Alternately, say that the fighter can wield it just fine provided he wears gauntlets of ogre strength.
In 3.5, an Artificer can disenchant a magic item to regain its XP cost. Now, in the PF setting there are no artificers and there are no XP costs, but it's not unreasonable to say there's some magical craftsman that can disenchant an item and use its magic towards enchanting a different item.
Many things can be bought and sold that make no real sense in the real world. Have you ever seen the TV ad for the show Oddities? People buy crazy stuff. Also think of all the adventurers that are buying things for their mounts, cohorts, and eidolon. Plus if you have a gladiator arena in the area they could buy stuff for exotic fights. The odds of selling these in a small market are small... but in big cities such as Katapesh it would sell just fine.
I've always assumed that one of the reasons evil/monstrous weapons can be sold for something like market value even in civilized areas (and without the ethical quandry of the ultimate customer being yet more frost giants or evil cults.) is that magic can be recycled.
I know that sounds silly (...)
There is nothing silly in it. In fact WotC made this an explicit rule in D&D 4th edition that magic items can be disenchanted with the right ritual producing magic dust that can be reused as a component in casting rituals, and by extension in creation of new magic items. 3.5 artificer was earlier implementation of that idea. I am not sure if artificer appeared before or after introduction of World Of Warcraft Enchanting skill and I am almost certain that the idea of recycling magic used to imbue items was older still.
Oh, wait, Narsil was reforged into Anduril...
My merry band of heroes just donate all the magical weird stuff to the nearest minor ruler's guards...
It's a running gag for me to let them keep finding a +1 awl pike...that is 25 feet long! A player in the sca made a fuss about non authentic pole arms in gaming...
It's the white elephant of treasure..."Just how did that green dragon get that? We donated it to Baron Wintersteel's footmen last year!"
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Here's what you do. The party finds someone who will buy it. That someone happens to be part of the BBEG's organization. BBEG has it turned into a golem's arm. At a later date, the PCs fight a golem whose arm looks very familiar.
Here's what you do. The party finds someone who will buy it. That someone happens to be part of the BBEG's organization. BBEG has it turned into a golem's arm. At a later date, the PCs fight a golem whose arm looks very familiar.
And the item can keep coming back. And back. And back. The evil, pointless magical item that comes back into play shortly after they sell it. (I actually think it would make a nice reoccurring plot point).
Until they decide it needs to be dumped in some Volcano.
It could be a long voyage. Or they could just cut to the end and get some flying eagles to take them there.
Otherwise one of them could have died on the trek. ;-)
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I figure that the Pathfinder Society maintains warehouses of these things and will always buy them. "Right. Menacing flaming Ogre Hook. Sized for a giant. Put it in aisle 17, section B. Any other properties? Oh, left handed grip and...smells like bacon grease. No, I don't want to know. Here's your gold."
Once, I built a mini-campaign around looting and then destroying a demon armor (one from DMG) : PCs were all LG and did not want this item to be retrieved by any evil archvilain.
A year and half adventure to get rid of it ; loots of loot (usable this time :-)), fights, XP and 5 levels gained.
One of the easiest way to start a campaign :-)
Once, I built a mini-campaign around looting and then destroying a demon armor (one from DMG) : PCs were all LG and did not want this item to be retrieved by any evil archvilain.
A year and half adventure to get rid of it ; loots of loot (usable this time :-)), fights, XP and 5 levels gained.
One of the easiest way to start a campaign :-)
That event was from a game of nearly two years ago. I didn't expect someone would've resurrect the thread but thanks for your comment.
If i remeber correctly i simply said the local mages were interested in buying it...it was a big city the party was in after all.
I'm so cold!
Ran a game years ago where the party found an Intelligent Magical Lance that could speak. I remember that it was a very nice item, but it was a bit overzealous, and would yell "Too Battle!!" whenever they party considered attacking anything. It also would cast a beacon of light down upon the person carrying it when they attacked, even if the lance was not being used. They party never sold the lance, they buried it six feet deep, on a random beach. And you know, they didn't even care what it was worth.
I generally assume expensive items can either be leeched of magic or used for rituals or sacrifice in accordance to it's gold value 'somehow'.
While you can wonder about the economics of selling a weapon like this it is generally not that kind of game, otherwise we might have to increase the value of a longsword+1, decrease it for a club+1.. etc.
While having a story around it helps I'd not get into price haggling too much and just stick close to the given values, though maybe you will need a larger town to sell the more common equipment.
Shrink item spell, size reduction version.
Or
Dispel magic + polymorph any object + (perhaps a craft check) = weapon usable by party & magic comes back on in d4 rounds.
In general terms I like Ross Byers answer, but there is this this item for changing a weapons size.