In the campaign I am currently running (RotRL), the party is starting to get close to finding their first artifact.
Now, knowing my players, I am fully expecting them to attempt to sell it... *party* "Payday!!!!"
Now, as things sit, obviously there are no prices associated with artifacts. I know I could attempt to kit bash something together for a price, likewse keeping the potential sale of said item limited to major cities.
What I am wondering is how others have approached this subject?
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
I guess that is one option, to completely bone them over... although some of the gold may need to be real to stand up against a degree of scrutiny.
Thinking about it, I'm guessing a side quest with either the Aspis Consortium or Pathfinders would fit in too...
*continues to ponder...*
Thinking about it, I'm guessing a side quest with either the Aspis Consortium or Pathfinders would fit in too...*continues to ponder...*
City of Brass?
No buyers.
( 1 ) Assuming a major artifact, we're talking about a mass of wealth that would bankrupt nations. There's no one on the Material Plane with that kind of coin. Which sends the players to the Planes. Fine, there are still . . .
No buyers.
( 2 ) Again, assuming a major artifact, most of them have some sort of curse associated with their use.
PARTY: <approaches the Mercane> "Soooooo, we have this Iron Bow. Just happens to be of Gesen. We'd like about --"
MERCANE: <backing away with hands upraised> "Ummmm, yeah, not interested in becoming some nomadic horseman."
Repeat this until the party realizes that they're stuck with it.
Assuming they get their hands on it... yeah, Major Artifact.
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As a less-dickish way of saying there are no buyers, maybe no one has the coin to meet their price. On that note, just let the PCs decide what it's worth to them if they want to sell it.
Is it supposed to be part of the plot? Then devise some way to convince them to keep it. A curse could work, but it might be better to come up with a compelling story reason to nudge them towards deciding to keep it on their own. Perhaps they need to protect it to prevent a catastrophe, or even destroy it. Maybe they find out their arch-nemesis really wants it, and would probably buy it from whoever they sold it to.
If it's not a story element... why are you giving them artifacts in the first place? :P
Artifacts are supposed to be for plot and gameplay. An entire quest may revolve around one. This kind of thing shouldn't be a get-rich quick scheme. I suppose knowing your party, it must be something they would want to keep.
Agreed. If the party is questing for this Artefact, they should really have a use for it other than its theoretical value.
And if the party isn't specifically looking for this Artefact... how will they even know its one?
He mentioned it was an AP i think in the first post, so its likely just something they have the chance to blunder into
My personal feeling on it is this:
Minor artifacts you can maybe find a buyer who is willing to pay the exorbitant price for that it is worth. Major artifacts are worth more than 200,000 gp. Almost no one has that kind of assets, and if they do they aren't liquid so they can't just hand over the gold value. We are truly talking about the wealth of (smaller) nations here.
If the party really wants to sell it, I'd allow it but they're not getting anywhere near the value they should out of it because no one can afford that price.
It may also be a plot hook that they sell it, it magically returns to them, and the buyer comes looking for it. Unhappy that the artifact they bought just disappeared.
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There is no Price for them. I like the Idea of No Buyers because it makes sense that no one can afford such an item.
Carrying around a powerful artifact draws attention of powerful beings.
You could Have a powerful being be drawed to it (after they try to sell it) and offer them all a single wish or something. Then remove the artifact from the Game. Later if it could have helped the PCs...well that is where you the DM profit.
There are always buyers. The question is if the party will accept what is offered. Of course, the process of selling makes it known that you have it, which sets them up for robbery or theft.
There are always buyers. The question is if the party will accept what is offered. Of course, the process of selling makes it known that you have it, which sets them up for robbery or theft.
Eh, there are always people who are going to want it. How many can afford whatever price the players want to ask?
Almost no one. Find the right person who can would not be an easy task.
Besides which, I would hope that any time an artifact was introduced into a campaign it is relevant enough to the plot that there should be very obvious uses for it that no one would want to sell it. If the item isn't relevant and you fear your players would rather have the gold than the item either change it to something they would want, or remove it completely. Artifacts are really supposed to be made for the plot, not a method to increase their wealth by level.
Hell, if nothing else remind players that many artifacts can be dangerous in the wrong hands.
A Deck of Many Things is considered an incredibly dangerous artifact and most players wont use them (in my group) because the risk isn't worth the reward. Well it is, but it isn't. In any event, you also can't go selling it to anyone either because they could run the risk of giving someone the means to kill them, destroy countries, etc.
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The thing with priceless items is that by definition there is no set price. Think about if you were trying to sell the Mona Lisa or the Crown Jewels in real life - sure you'd be able to find a buyer, but it would be tricky and generally illegal, plus you'd have entire countries after you who have a historical claim to the item in question.
The other issue is that a collector really isn't generally going to be able to offer much from an adventurer perspective - adventurers have a stupendous amount of money, even low level ones. 1 gp has the buying power of like $100(US). So a for a rare or unique item to be worth 200k gp, it would be worth about 20 million dollars IRL. That's not a transaction where you run down to the local mall and just shop.
Basically selling an artifact should be an adventure in and of itself, not just a matter of assigning a price and having the players adjust their sheets accordingly.
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Artifacts should not just be priceless, they should be game-changing or world-changing. So, if the PCs want to sell it - fine. However they won't get what it's worth, and anyone who wants to buy it from them is probably going to use it in a way they don't like. Down the road they might find themselves forced to try and defeat the person they sold it to.
Just make sure that selling it is NOT the end of the story. It should come up again later. No one's going to buy it just to hide it away, and anyone who would want to hide it away probably can't afford to pay for it.
There's an artifact in my game that is so powerful it's spent most of two campaigns encased in lead and locked in a box because the players are afraid to use it and afraid to give it to anyone else.
Here are two questions to think about:
1) Do you feel like this artifact is supposed to be part of the group's "Wealth by Level"? In other words, was the available treasure especially low because this artifact is part of the treasure?
If the answer is yes, then don't screw them over. They were supposed to loot this and they got unusually low loot because of it, so make sure that they do find a buyer who pays fairly for it, or else you're screwing the whole group over. But if the answer is no, then that means the group was fairly rewarded for the adventure AND they got this artifact above and beyond that fair reward. So taking it away from them is fair game.
2) Do you feel like this artifact is important to the rest of the campaign? If you're not sure, then sit down and read the bloody thing until you are.
If the answer is no, then it doesn't matter if they sell it or lose it, so behave according to your answer to the first question*. But if the answer is yes, then make sure there are no buyers available so they're stuck with it until they find out how valuable it really is.
*However, if this artifact is NOT important to the campaign, then this is probably bad writing and possibly bad GMing. Artifacts are supposed to be big deals. They are priceless because they are big deals. It's bad enough when a player stumbles upon a +3 sword and says "Great. Another damn magical item. How much can we sell it for." That happens often enough. But it should never happen with an artifact. Ever. The response should always be "Oh, wow, this is awesome!" because artifacts should always be awesome every time. That said, if you think they're going to sell it, then edit the powers to be more useful and hopefully campaign-specific which somewhat justifies being hard to sell, or even better, make it specifically suited to one of the PCs (whoever seems lowest in WBL or seems to be the weakest in terms of being useful in this adventure). Edit the powers or replace the artifact with a new one. Make it awesome and they won't want to sell it at all.
** spoiler omitted **.
Actually, you may he ed to scroll around it first... :p
And yes Hazrond, it is from a published AP... RotRL.
*goes back to getting caught up on responses... thanks again guys for the input*
Thanks again...
My hope is that the party holds onto it as it can be helpfull for them as the remainder of the AP unfolds. Especially in understanding their advesary.
Having said that... knowing my group, they are most likely going to balance its value against its singular useabilty vs X ammount of gold to increase every bodys effectiveness. There minds seem to usually circle about to that mindset.
If they keep it... Great. No need to worry.
If they look to sell it... I'm back to my current conundrum I'm looking to prepare for.
Now, value wise, the sale of such an object is of a level that one couldn't hope to just pawn off at the local "MagicMart". Thats a given, it's "priceless".
As I tend to run rather "organic" games... I.e. their decisions have consequences... How could something like this play out? As I have commented above about possibly involving the Aspis Consortium or Pathfinders. Or other ideas so far: con them out of the gold, have it reappear when sold with an unhappy buyer following, or make it outright unsellable.
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My advice: let them sell it if they insist, but don't let them have full book value for it if full-book is truly beyond the means of an NPC to purchase it. In fact, don't even let them appraise it's full book value without a really high appraise check. Even then, tell tham that it's basically priceless but the most they could get for it is "X" gold pieces in the current market because it's such a specialized item. If they do sell it, make sure it ends up in the hands of one of their adversaries down the line, preferably one who can use it intelligently.
I'm trying to remember any major artifact in Runelords, other then the Sword of the Champion...and letting an intelligent evil artifact out there to take over the hapless is not a good idea.
Basically, they should find out what the artifact is and what it is supposed to be used for, then they should find someone to safeguard it. Selling it basically means 'getting it into active play in the campaign', and it should come back to bite them hard. "Yes, you got 250k gp for it! and now the happy wielder has conquered three countries and slaughtered at least a hundred thousand people, congratulations!" type of thing.
Or they find they need it to take on a NEW big bad, except they've already sold it and they can't find the new owner, for some suspicious reason.
etc.
It's an artifact. Don't treat it as any other magic item, treat it as the plot device that it is.
==Aelryinth
Hum i would advise to make the very act of selling it a side quest , the only issue with this is that it will interrupt the current ongoing quest.
About the whole thing of fooling the PCs and giving them fake gold... Well , to me this is pretty much also a side quest , since if i was a player my priority would be hunting down the guy , even if the world was ending or whatever. This could actually become a whole campaign depending on how long it takes to find and recover the item.
Making a villain use the item also has the obvious issue that is , the PCs might just get it again and sell it again...
Having run RotRL twice, there isn't any city that I am aware of that has the purchase capacity to handle the reasonable cost an artifact would demand (Magnimar's purchase limit is only 75K gp). It would become a quest/adventure in and of itself to find someone with both the capacity and interest in making the purchase. (Just noticed that ryric made this same statement...)There are two places (that I can recall offhand, anyway) that will be explicitly able to swing the purchase cost:
- Emporium Isitalba, a shop in Dis detailed in Hell Unleashed. While the main floor of the shop likely wouldn't be able to swing an artifact, things in Isitalba's study or the hidden cache in the basement might indicate her purchase ability.
- Alushinyrra has a purchase limit of 300,000gp (!). As such, it's entirely reasonable that you'd be able to find a buyer here for some minor artifacts. With some work and a bit of luck, you'd likely be able to find a buyer for a major artifact.
Either of those are an option. Additionally, there's also the possibility of:
- Vyre has a purchase limit of 100,000gp. Given its "darker" nature and extremely high level inhabitants, you may be able to find somebody here who could buy it, or somebody who knows somebody (who may know somebody) who can buy it.
- The City of Brass has a 100,000gp purchase limit. So something like Vyre, I would guess.
- Starfall has a purchase limit of 200,000gp. This might be enough for some of the weaker minor artifacts (the ones that aren't actually unique), depending on how much money your players want for the artifact.
- All of Freeport, if you use it. All of Freeport, pooling together the purchase limit for each district into a collective whole.
Note that I have limited myself to cities with actual mechanics here. You may also be able to find a buyer in Dis, Axis, Absalom (more likely the Vyre effect here, though), and certain other cities. However, they have no statblock, and so it's GM purview.
If you're talking places in the golarion setting that can afford to BUY it, Absalom is probably the only place on Golarion.
Off? Planar Metropolis, your best bet is likely Axis, the Eternal City.
==Aelryinth
Axis is a planar metropolis, and would have the default stats thereof. So, yeah, its actually the default choice, and the most commonly visited such place from Golarion.
==Aelryinth
Ok... sale seems to be becoming more likely...
Party just finished Hook Mountain and found a cache of giant bane arrows. They sold them, despite the upcoming raid on Sandpoint.
*goes back to trying to figure out how to handle it...*
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Ok... sale seems to be becoming more likely...
Party just finished Hook Mountain and found a cache of giant bane arrows. They sold them, despite the upcoming raid on Sandpoint.
*goes back to trying to figure out how to handle it...*
That's pretty bad decision. My party used them by giving them to NPC archers for the defense of the town. SInce the PC characters could handle the giants unlike commoners.
Tho my last play through I beat the raid by Magic Jarring the Dragon, and using Longtooth to tear apart the Giants. Only a single building and a bridge was destroyed. And the towns Cowardly men, Woman, children and elderly where all safe inside Foxglove manor (Cleared it out in book 2). No one got kidnapped and had minor NPC deaths...all at the cost of my gluttony wizard.
He was rather Ticked off he rolled a 1 on the magic jar save and I turned his entire fight into a 1 sided beat down. The DM had a random Giant infiltrate and find my body...tear it apart and carry off the pieces in a single round. But IMO it was worth it to play as a dragon breathing fire on armies of Giants and watching them scatter like cockroaches. But it was probably a good thing he killed off my Wizard because I had plans to reanimate that dragon anyways.
Not all artifacts are the One Ring or the Hand of Vecna, sometimes they're not even terribly powerful, they just break the normal rules in some way. In Rise of the Runelords there are no less that *15* artifacts, some of them very minor and very easy to price. For example:
If Empress Thrune wants to buy herself a nice birthday present 100,000gp is within the realm of possibility given that her government is extracting tax from presumably millions of subjects.
So I went through and added up the population for all the settlements I could find for Cheliax because I wanted to show how far off your idea here is. Cheliax's population isn't in the millions. It's not even a million. From the settlements I found that had listed populations the total population of Cheliax is 260,700 people. Of which, a majority are probably farmers and other relatively low income individuals. This thread has decent estimates on how much such an individual should make. Which is about 20gp per month, with about 5gp of that going to taxes. Now, that does come out to quite a bit of money each month. But remember that this is the government's money, not the queen's money personally. This money has to be used to keep up the infrastructure, pay it's employee, etc.
In short, my point is that I don't think it's as simple or cheap as you think it is. 100,000gp on an item is an incredibly significant investment for even a government to still make.
Claxon raises a distinct point. Every time I flip through the World Guide, I'm always struck by how small the population figures are for the cities. They're quite small relative to equivalent real world cities of Medieval or Early Renaissance Earth. (Around 1550 AD, London's population was over 100,000 people, Constantinople was over 600,000 people, and Tenochtitlan has been estimated at over 1,000,000 people. Dozens of cities had populations over 100,000 people. Such populations are vanishingly rare on Golarion.)
Think about all of the magical mega-disasters that have been inflicted on Golarion and the Inner Sea in general, which don't really have real life equivalents. And that's not counting the wars which got pretty obscene compared to wars in comparable times
And ME!!!
I'm great for population control. Why, I can eat a decent sized village as an afternoon snack.
Nothing keeps down the baby boom like a good ol' Tarrasque rampage!
C H O M P ! ! !
Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom.
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well, just remember something.
The average city is the center of a population zone. 90% of that population zone lives OUTSIDE the city, raising the food and getting the raw materials needed for those INSIDE the city.
So, national populations are MUCH higher then just the cities indicate. The rural population of Cheliax likely outstips the urban by 10:1.
==Aelryinth
I think treating Axis as a single metropolis grossly undersells Axis.
Axis is big. Because it's actually an outer plane that happens to be in the form of a city.
It's a city with a size measured in astronomical units.
In my games for simplicity I treat Axis as an infinite series of metropolis-class districts.
And that's just the regular plane, let alone Abadar's or Norgorbor's divine realms.
But yeah, actually selling an artifact is easily worth up to a settlement's purchase limit (representing the liquid buying power of the richest thing in the settlement).
Though in a place like Axis or other extraplanar metropoli, I don't think you'd be selling it for money; you'd be trading it for a service.
You might get some bad-ass immortal to agree to help you for a year and a day in exchange for the artifact, for example.
(Also note that artifacts are going to hard to sell to people who aren't really high-powered themselves, because IDing an artifact is HARD, and if you're the sort of person who can buy an artifact outright, you're not going to just take a group of murderhobos at their word for what it is.)
well, just remember something.
The average city is the center of a population zone. 90% of that population zone lives OUTSIDE the city, raising the food and getting the raw materials needed for those INSIDE the city.
So, national populations are MUCH higher then just the cities indicate. The rural population of Cheliax likely outstips the urban by 10:1.
==Aelryinth
Which also hold up with Kingmaker, even. You might only have 5 or 6 cites, but dozens of hexes of farmland...
It's a city with a size measured in astronomical units.
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1 AU is the distance from the Sun to Earth, or roughly 150.000.000km (93 million miles)
Sounds exaggerated.
Guru, it's an ENTIRE DIMENSIONAL PLANE FILLED BY A CITY.
It's literally INFINITE SIZE.
Think of a neighborhood the size of, oh, the MILKY WAY GALAXY.
AU's? Not a big enough measurement. Parsecs, at least.
==Aelryinth