Magic Item Economy

[Archade]

Hey all,

The excerpt from D4E is up on the Wizard's site today, and one pleasing thing I see is the fact that magic items are sold at 1/5, not 1/2 of market price.

Would pathfinder benefit from looking at how equipment and magic items gathered are sold and purchased?

[Herald]

I saw that too. There might be some serious thinking to be sure that adventures in the future meet the standard and provide enough to meet the expected wealth per level of the PCs.

[Rezdave]

Archade wrote:

The excerpt from D4E is up on the Wizard's site today, and one pleasing thing I see is the fact that magic items are sold at 1/5, not 1/2 of market price.

I've generally used a 20% cap for all loot items for a long time, assuming the items are in good condition. It goes down dramatically as well for damaged or mundane items, local fluctuations and market conditions, etc.

The PCs in my last campaign were pleased to have a benefactor with a wide distribution network that would unload everything regardless of quantity and pay them a flat 15% so long as it was not damaged beyond repair. Now they didn't have to worry about finding buyers, disrupting local economies, carting the stuff all over the place, etc. Sometimes, their buyer would even handle the "haul-out", assuming they had already fully secured the site.

Anyway, I think 20% should be a Maximum, but for what D&D is and general simplicity it is a good change.

FWIW,

Rez

[roguerouge]

The simulationist in me finds this announcement strange: you ratchet down the supply of magic items (i.e. to fight the magic item XMas tree effect) yet the demand for said items also goes down?

[Rezdave]

roguerouge wrote:

you ratchet down the supply of magic items ... yet the demand for said items also goes down?

In my view, PCs generally unload items through a trader or broker who sells them to merchants and shopkeepers who retail them to end-buyers. Shopkeepers probably don't buy directly from "disreputable adventurers", and if they do they only pay half as much.

Assuming a 100% mark-up at each stage, then PCs should get 25% even for "new" magic items (I also use 25% rather than 50% as the item-creation cost for this reason). Used ones would be worth less.

Rez

[Ernest Mueller]

So there's really no more terrible idea than just declaring that magic items "sell for less." It makes no sense - permanent magic items, by their nature, don't degrade in power or value. So now no one will buy them for more than 20% of value (under cost) - except for adventurers, who are buying for 100% plus? This is the retarded kind of tripe that makes me hate 4e. Let's at least pretend there's still a hint of simulationism in D&D.

Now, there is indeed a problem with the magic item economy that needs fixing. The core of the problem is how quick and easy it is to make items. It provides a great incentive to cash in items for money in order to finance a min-maxed set of items (+1 armor, +1 natural armor, +1 resistance, +2 to prime stat...)

In earlier editions you kept the weird valuable magic item (Helm of Underwater Action!) because

1. Magic was rare, and in case you need it you can't rely on quickly obtaining magic "to fit". "What if I need me some underwater action one day?"

2. Money couldn't be simply chewed on by a wizard for a day and pooped out into a magic item - even if you got "full price" for that helm, what were you going to spend the money on - items weren't readily available. You couldn't turn it into the standard min-max array easily.

So IMO the way to handle the problem is:

1. Better rules on what you can obtain. "Anything under the locality's gp limit" is a bit too generous.

2. Better crafting rules that take a longer time and/or something other than "a bag of gold" to make a permanent magic item.

3. Better buying/selling rules in general. Leverage skills to find buyers or sellers.

[Leress]

Ernest Mueller wrote:

So there's really no more terrible idea than just declaring that magic items "sell for less." It makes no sense - permanent magic items, by their nature, don't degrade in power or value. So now no one will buy them for more than 20% of value (under cost) - except for adventurers, who are buying for 100% plus? This is the retarded kind of tripe that makes me hate 4e. Let's at least pretend there's still a hint of simulationism in D&D.

Now, there is indeed a problem with the magic item economy that needs fixing. The core of the problem is how quick and easy it is to make items. It provides a great incentive to cash in items for money in order to finance a min-maxed set of items (+1 armor, +1 natural armor, +1 resistance, +2 to prime stat...)

In earlier editions you kept the weird valuable magic item (Helm of Underwater Action!) because

1. Magic was rare, and in case you need it you can't rely on quickly obtaining magic "to fit". "What if I need me some underwater action one day?"

2. Money couldn't be simply chewed on by a wizard for a day and pooped out into a magic item - even if you got "full price" for that helm, what were you going to spend the money on - items weren't readily available. You couldn't turn it into the standard min-max array easily.

So IMO the way to handle the problem is:

1. Better rules on what you can obtain. "Anything under the locality's gp limit" is a bit too generous.

2. Better crafting rules that take a longer time and/or something other than "a bag of gold" to make a permanent magic item.

3. Better buying/selling rules in general. Leverage skills to find buyers or sellers.

You may want to look at this...Economicon (scroll down)

Economicon

and this about crafting (scroll down)
Book of Gears

This may have some ideas

[Squirrelloid]

Ultimately, the problem with decreasing item resalability is that the game assumes you have level-appropriate gear. So if you're a spiked chain fighter, those swords really need to be sold and turned into spiked chains (or other gear). And this applies to almost any class archetype that has specific demands on item types.

It gets even worse when you remember that randomly generated treasure is a default game assumption. Chances are, you're going to generate a bunch of useless (to the party) junk rather than that cape of resistance that the party really needs to keep their numbers competitive.

And lack of resale as a valid means of turning useless or less useful items into necessary items hurts melee types more than caster types. The melee types not only need all the same items casters do (stat enhancers, armor pumpers, save pumpers, and so forth), they also need weapons, for which the lottery on the random tables is overwhelmingly diverse, and what is the fighter going to do with the Tonfu +3? Melee types are incredibly item dependent, and already on the low end of the power spectrum.

There are ultimately two ways to go:
(1) Keep item dependency, and make the default game assumption that players can trade items at a reasonable rate to acquire useful items.
(2) Remove item dependency, and remove all items that are straight numerical pumps. Make these numerical pumps universal character abilities or class abilities. Ie, all characters with armor proficiencies gain GMW and Magic Vestment 1/day at CL=character level. All characters get a spell-like which pumps resistance 1/3 char levels. (Giving characters abilities like that to compensate for not having to deal with the items is necessary if you don't want to rewrite the MM).

Basically, number pumping items are currently necessary, and players need access to them. You can't just take away the number pumping - either keep the items easily available or remove the items and move the bonuses to character abilities for everyone. No other solution is plausible with back compatibility.