I agree, the money system in PF/D&D is horrible. It really really really needs an overhaul.
I generally allow opposed diplomacy checks when selling/buying. Every point you beat the guy by you get 1% difference in your favor. That keeps things a bit more realistic, and makes it possible to get discounts or sell things better. Of course, at low levels, negotiating with a guy may cause you to get a worse deal (think of negotiating with the wife on Green Acres), since he's really good and you're not so good. But once you get up in level, you can generally negotiate a good bit.
The problem with this very popular and very wrong assumption is that it assumes an infinite amount of paying customers.The problem is not item creation, but DM's who aren't willing to adjudicate without a confirmation chorus at their elbow. The rules in this game are not, will not, can not, and never should be complete. They are a springboard from where the DM takes off and completes the scenario as she sees fit.
Sorry we tried saying things like this up the Thread but it seems the fight was more welcomed lol. Now if you would be so kind as to stop making sense...?
Really guys it has been said by a handful of us already but this guy here sums it right up.
Personally I think Item creation feats should give a sizable revenue bonus to your profession/craft skills based on the size of the town you are in based on the idea that you are building items on demand. It makes more sense than assuming someone is going to buy your big ticked randomly generated treasure than your big ticket custom magic item.
PC: and I want to sell this wand of Light.
Town Guard purchaser: well you see we have lanterns and don't really need one of those but if you could make us a wand of cure light
PC: Buy the random crap I bring you!
Town Guard: ...
They sell magic items to shop owners for half price so they can be re-sold at their profit. However, the PC could instead, open a shop and directly sell his items to other adventurers.
Congratulations, your caster has decided to focus on shopkeeping instead of adventuring. You've essentially become one of those retired adventurers that are so commonly the proprietors of magic item shops. Roll up a new character.
If you really want to handle having a business and have a way of comparing different stores look in the DMG2 from 3.5 actually had a whole section on this that included varying modifiers based on the risk vs reward of the jobs.
I'm surprised people are still posting in this thread. I've been watching the argument about Pathfinder economics, wondering how this thread got necroed. I originally posted it almost a year ago, and in that time my GM and I came to an understanding when I enforced the same rules he set in my campaign. Suddenly he didn't like his ruling either.
Anyway, I don't think I mentioned anywhere, but at the time, I was starting a Kingmaker campaign, and the aspect of 'infinite time' was somewhat plausible. From my perspective, I was very annoyed with my GM as he had outright said no to crafting, thinking I was intending to break the system, when I was the one who originally pointed it out to him. Not only that, I asked if we could sit down and come up with an alternative, and was fully willing to limit what I could and could not do so we could have realistic limits.
Anyway, as it stands, I've used crafting to help generate some extra BP for our kingdom, but I've limited myself to 1 BP per month, when I could, theoretically, generate a lot more. However, I've never been much into munchkinizing a game, min-maxing, or however you like to call it. I do however look for such options so I can be aware of them, and plan ahead for just such a person that tries to follow one of the many builds online.
As it stands, the topic for me is closed, though I encourage others to try and come up with alternative systems and post them here, or link to them, in case others run into similar scenarios.
Here's why you buy at full and sell at half.
It's called economics. No, seriously, it is. Take something to a pawnshop. You'll get half-value for it. Open your own pawn shop, you'll pay half value for something and sell it at full value (value of what it's worth used, not new, but the point remains).
Every good in the world trading at 50% gross margin, regardless of apparent demand for it, supply of it, time involved in making it, selling costs, ease of entry into the market, etc. is FAR from being described by anything worth calling "economics."
At best, you could call it "gameonomics."
Yep.
Which goes back to how 'real' you want your economics to be in your game world. In my opinion, buy/sell prices for magic and mundane items should be a function of where you are in the game world, as well as your reputation and your ability to find buyers/sellers. They really should be campaign specific, and it's a shame most game designers skip this part of the game world.
I/we didn't skip it with ours, and we have rules for trade of essential mundane commodities as well as magic items. (link previous page)
Never said it was a good economics model, only an economics model. :)
I tend to adjust prices accordingly in my game world, based on where the players are, the current economic climate, etc. Right now, in one game, the players are in a city where food is 5 x more expensive than normal, due to the city having been cut off from caravans for a month, and people panicing and hoarding food.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The way I play it in my game:
Selling items at half-price is for when you need to sell things quickly. Shop owners are buying on speculation, figuring that they'll probably be able to sell at a profit later. I let the PCs just convert items into cash at half book price on their own whenever they're in a settlement of sufficient size. It takes 1 hour of game time.
If PCs want to get more for an item, they can try to find a specific buyer. This takes dedicated in-game time. The general rule of thumb is it takes 1 day per 500 gp of the item's value to find a buyer. A successful Diplomacy [gather information] check can lower this time. When found, the buyer will buy pay 75% of list price. Successful Profession (merchant) vs. Sense Motive can raise the price that the buyer is willing to pay.
My PCs are usually on a plot-related timetable, and don't have the luxury to spend two weeks scouring major cities to find a buyer for that +1 cold iron gnome hooked hammer (size small) that nobody in the party can use, so they're usually content to just take 5,000 gp for an item that lists for 10,000 gp.
The way I play it in my game:
Selling items at half-price is for when you need to sell things quickly. Shop owners are buying on speculation, figuring that they'll probably be able to sell at a profit later. I let the PCs just convert items into cash at half book price on their own whenever they're in a settlement of sufficient size. It takes 1 hour of game time.
If PCs want to get more for an item, they can try to find a specific buyer. This takes dedicated in-game time. The general rule of thumb is it takes 1 day per 500 gp of the item's value to find a buyer. A successful Diplomacy [gather information] check can lower this time. When found, the buyer will buy pay 75% of list price. Successful Profession (merchant) vs. Sense Motive can raise the price that the buyer is willing to pay.
My PCs are usually on a plot-related timetable, and don't have the luxury to spend two weeks scouring major cities to find a buyer for that +1 cold iron gnome hooked hammer (size small) that nobody in the party can use, so they're usually content to just take 5,000 gp for an item that lists for 10,000 gp.
That is a really, REALLY, good ruling and the best one I've seen so far. Mind if I borrow without intent to return?
The way I play it in my game:
Selling items at half-price is for when you need to sell things quickly. Shop owners are buying on speculation, figuring that they'll probably be able to sell at a profit later. I let the PCs just convert items into cash at half book price on their own whenever they're in a settlement of sufficient size. It takes 1 hour of game time.
If PCs want to get more for an item, they can try to find a specific buyer. This takes dedicated in-game time. The general rule of thumb is it takes 1 day per 500 gp of the item's value to find a buyer. A successful Diplomacy [gather information] check can lower this time. When found, the buyer will buy pay 75% of list price. Successful Profession (merchant) vs. Sense Motive can raise the price that the buyer is willing to pay.
My PCs are usually on a plot-related timetable, and don't have the luxury to spend two weeks scouring major cities to find a buyer for that +1 cold iron gnome hooked hammer (size small) that nobody in the party can use, so they're usually content to just take 5,000 gp for an item that lists for 10,000 gp.
I'd steal this if I wasn't running Kingmaker, which specifically has very little in the way of timetables.
Yeah, I'm taking some item creation feats in kingmaker but its almost exclusively to make weird little luxury items.
|
The way I play it in my game:
Selling items at half-price is for when you need to sell things quickly. Shop owners are buying on speculation, figuring that they'll probably be able to sell at a profit later. I let the PCs just convert items into cash at half book price on their own whenever they're in a settlement of sufficient size. It takes 1 hour of game time.
If PCs want to get more for an item, they can try to find a specific buyer. This takes dedicated in-game time. The general rule of thumb is it takes 1 day per 500 gp of the item's value to find a buyer. A successful Diplomacy [gather information] check can lower this time. When found, the buyer will buy pay 75% of list price. Successful Profession (merchant) vs. Sense Motive can raise the price that the buyer is willing to pay.
My PCs are usually on a plot-related timetable, and don't have the luxury to spend two weeks scouring major cities to find a buyer for that +1 cold iron gnome hooked hammer (size small) that nobody in the party can use, so they're usually content to just take 5,000 gp for an item that lists for 10,000 gp.
For particular items, ranging from the throne you find in Scarwall in one AP (more than a material value it had a historical value) to some particular high value magic item I gave access to auction houses to my players.
The auction houses are available only in the major cities and will take a long time to sell the item (at least 2-3 months) as they will have to gather enough material to get an auction with some kind of theme going and then publicize it (if you want to sell a piece of historical importance it is convenient to have lesser material that would be of interest for the same group of costumers. that way the big piece will pull the sales of other material).
The characters will select the minimum sale price and the auction house will take a % cut of the full sale price. If the item isn't sold they will still take their percentage on the minimum sale price.
The actual success of the sale and the final sale price are based on a percentage roll, with modifiers depending on the city size, trading fame and the quality of the auction house.
The auction house % will wary based on its reputation and the quality of the service.
There will be a risk, primarily with a low quality auction house, of the auction house manager fleeing with the money or the item and of a shady deal between the manager and some buyer to sell the item at a low price.
The above mentioned throne sold at about 140% of the evaluation and about 280% of what they would have got from a direct sale, but the sale was finalized 7 months after they had brought it at Absalon.
Nice money, but it was too late to be useful for that AP (it wasn't lost, as they had several adventures after the end of the AP).
@Bobson
I will use both ideas in Kingmaker.
With all the problems they will entail for me and the characters.
I will use Haladir but keep the city purchase limit in mind. The character will not be capable to sell a 50.000 gp items in a hamlet with 100 habitants, even if they were capable to get a result of 50 in their diplomacy check.
Similarly a action house in Restov will have a very different pool of costumers than Absalom.
If the player want to sell some very valuable find they will have to organize its transportation to a big city, something that can eb an adventure by itself.