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So as the topic says, I'm trying to learn GMing as we go with my group of inexperienced players. One thing I'm struggling with is the way I should handle loot. I've done some googling and given up on appraise apart from valuable mundane looking items and jewels. Spellcraft seems.. Silly, but I've kept it so that they get to roll once in dungeon to determine the magic qualities, but at failure they need to take it back home and spend ~1 hour to study it (for take 20). I still feel there could be ways to improve this, but I'm out of ideas.
Could you guys give examples on how you would literally handle your "from loot to sell" part of the game on the example loot of:
1 cold iron dagger
1 +1 bastard sword
1 shideron medallion (when they dont know the meaning of the star yet)
No matter "what my players like". I just want to get other perspectives.
As an example, I would tell them the following on the example loot:
If they then choose to try and detect if any of the items have magic qualities, I would give up that the sword & necklace do and have the spellcrafters roll to determine the specifics. If they succeed, I tell them that the sword has +1 enchantment, while the necklace gives +1 to all saves and false life once per day. If they fail on spellcraft checks, they remain unsure of what the specifics of the items are, but can then later spend time studying them better to learn the details.
There are few gaps that I'm unsure how to "fix". I sort of like the spellcraft system I have, but feel as if I should just give up the specifics once they reach town. I also am unsure how much to give details on the medallion's.. Qualities. I never tell straight up the sell prices of items either, all though my players have started to learn values and as such, they can meta game it anyway. This leaves a situation where I can't let them just dumb the items as they'd sometimes like to, because I sort of force them to do atleast a little bit of roleplay to determine the prices at stores.
So please, if you got a moment to spare, share your methods of loot resolving! Thanks :)
It sounds like you're doing a pretty good job of it, actually. You're giving them descriptions, rather than just a laundry list, and letting them use their skills and abilities to learn more.
What you might want to do for yourself is add some extra notes to the items found. For anything potentially valuable, make a note of the Appraise DCs. For magic items, include a note about the item's school and aura strength (for instance, a +1 sword would have a faint evocation aura), and the Spellcraft DC for identification.
You can't retry these Spellcraft checks (you only get one try per day), so you can't take 20. The Identify spell is useful here, since it gives +10 to this check on everything being examined. It works out to one item per caster level.
Players kill head bad girl, party begins to declare looting of items, telling me who they're going after individually, sometimes whoever reports in first is considered to be who goes first, sometimes I go by initiative.
I private message the individuals what they find on the bodies they look at. The player, then in turn tells the party what they found, with Slight of Hand/Bluff rolls as appropriate. The gear is dumped into a pile, and someone casts Detect Magic on things.
I say...
There's a jewel of average quality, a cold iron dagger, a nice looking bastard sword that detects as magic, and a medallion of a seven pointed start that detects as magic (I'd say the school and strength here unless the group was in a position to not likely spend the full three rounds).
After that, people can make appraise checks and I'll give them the value if they make it, or an incorrect value if they botch the roll bad enough (as per the Appraise skill). Or spellcraft rolls to ID the magic items, and normally I either say "it's a plus one weapon" or send them a link to the item on the SRD.
I do think the base economy of Pathfinder is screwy, but at the same time I'm not here for an accurate simulation, nor am I here to play Merchant: The Bartering, so outside of rare circumstances there isn't a lot of haggling and bartering and things sell for 50% unless they're trade goods, or the party is in good standing with the merchant, or bad standing for that matter.
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If my party found the items in question, I'd say: "You find a small ruby (let's call it a ruby), a dagger with a dark metal blade that you recognize as cold iron, a finely crafted bastard sword and a medallion of a seven pointed star." If they want to know how much for the ruby, they need to roll Appraise. Christopher pretty much describes how I would reveal info to the players as well.
I also agree with his analysis. I think players enjoy using their characters to find out more about the world, and the "price your loot" game is a small microcosm of that. More description is always better than less!
Correction: Certain items are worth 100% of their value: jewelry, gems, and other trade goods.
You can disagree with it, and you can house-rule differently. But Paizo has stated that these items are worth their full value.
Tangent is correct -- treasure items, or items that have their gold values listed in the module, are SOLD by the PCs for the price listed, not the 50% markdown as it is for weapons and adventuring gear. The reason being is that these items are there solely for the PCs to sell off to make money (or to hoard greedily, YMMV). If you let your PCs sell all the items at less than the value listed in the treasure sections, your PCs will be at less than WBL (if that's a thing you even care about) in relation to their progress.
Also consider the prices as written are the value the PCs can sell for because there would be no need to buy these items at market, so why would the author give the market value and force you to half it in order to find the sell value?
At any rate, if you don't want your PCs getting full value for every treasure item, make them make an appraise check (that IS what appraise is for, after all). The 50% markdown really only applies to craftable equipment, and the rule exists so that PCs can't make a profit crafting items and selling them to vendors.
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I would handle the situation much as others have mentioned above. Unfortunately I admit that after a while I allowed my Carrion Crown game to devolve into a simple 'pool of treasure' situation.
They find something they don't need? It goes into the pool of treasure to be sold at the first opportunity. I fail considerably at the whole bluff/sleight of hand sneakiness dynamic and the profits from selling the items are split evenly between the group. The rogue in the group has complained about this to me several times.
One element that I do add in at later levels is that after say... 10 times using spellcraft and detect magic you can pretty much identify a similar item just by detecting magic on it. At this point they have found more than 20 +1 weapons or armor and the alchemist has identified a lion's share of them with spellcraft. Likewise if it's a higher + I will say, "Well you know it's at least a +1 but you need spellcraft to know more."
I've chosen that while Detect Magic will give you basic information on an item, you need to use Identify to find Command Words or determine if it's cursed. Because let's face it. Right now Identify is a wasted spell pretty much no one uses.
My players aren't interested in the divvying up of loot to do what they want with. Even though we have a rogue, once treasure is discovered it goes into the "Party Loot" and then sold off (unless any item or treasure is wanted by a specific party member). Magic items worth holding on to are generally given to the player who would benefit the most, or if there is more than one player who would use it they will discuss to figure out who gets it.
As for magic weapons, I give them nothing except "a magical aura" for the same reason Tangent gave: the party wizard uses Identify all the time -- though, I'm not sure that spell is even necessary anymore, given his Spellcraft check bonus of +18.
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Based on what you've written, I think you're doing a good job handling items. I agree with your descriptions of items and your use of Spellcraft. Tangent101 has a good idea regarding using identify for some specifics of how items work. You also might look into using Appraise more often with gems/jewelry, art, etc.
Another thing to use the GP limits outlined in the communities stat block. It details how much loot a specific community can absorb (available cash) and the limit on what value of items are available. I take an additional step and I set a "buyback" percentage for each community. Instead of the standard 50%, I might set the buyback for a small-ish village to be 30% or 40%. This gives me another tool to use to throttle the party's wealth, and it can give them some additional motivation to hold on to (and make use of) an item until they can travel to a bigger city with a higher buyback.
-Skeld