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The Sandpoint Settlement block (p. 371 AE) lists the base value for Sandpoint as 1300gp.
The Game Mastery Guide (p. 204) describes the base value thusly: "There is a 75% chance that any item of this value or lower can be found for sale in the community with little effort."
So, if what they want to buy is less than 1300gp than it's reasonable to let them purchase it. You can randomly check (at 75%) whether it's actually available. The GMG goes on to also say: "If an item is not available, a new check to determine if the item has become available can be made in 1 week." It does not explicitly address whether any particular item can ordered specifically from a craftsman with the relevant skill but it may be assumed as an alternative (see Opportunity, Role-Playing.)
If the pc's want something worth more than 1300gp, they can try Magnimar with a base value of 12,800gp (p. 388 AE)
I don't know if you're going to find detailed inventories like you're looking for (but the internet is a big place, so what do I know?) Most GM's let pc's purchase whatever they like within the limits (some even ignore the limts) assuming they have requisite gp. The question is how much economic mechanism and scarcity do you want to introduce into the game?
Perhaps your doubts are about play balance? It may feel like an article of faith but the system is built to maintain balance - as monster CR goes up, treasure values go up, magic item prices go up, etc. The AP executes this for you - if you give the treasure as provided in the AP and there are 4 pc's, they generally shouldn't be able to purchase anything unbalancing. Now that's a bold assertion and things can go wrong - game designers cannot necessarily anticipate the outcome every combination of race, class, feat, skill, spell, item, and play style. But you're likely okay letting players spend their gold on items. Keep in mind paying full price drains off more of their treasure than crafting feats...
I often pre-generate magic shop inventories. Start with http://donjon.bin.sh/pathfinder/magic/shop.html
then adjust and amplify to fit.
For some reason, I just don't like the idea of having 75% of everything (under a given gp cap) being available. Must be the grognard in me.
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I made a spreadsheet with Sandpoint shops for my players, maybe you can use it.
I often pre-generate magic shop inventories. Start with http://donjon.bin.sh/pathfinder/magic/shop.html
then adjust and amplify to fit.
For some reason, I just don't like the idea of having 75% of everything (under a given gp cap) being available. Must be the grognard in me.
Don't get me wrong - I'm as grognardy as the next DM. (That is too a word.) I'm just trying to consume the system as implied. I'm loathe to reference the wealth by level table (given how it is sometimes used to abuse DMs) but it does suggest an underlying truth - pc's are assumed to get more powerful both by advancing in level and re-investing their treasure into themselves, most commonly by purchasing or creating magic items. If the re-investment is going to happen, the pc's will need methods to make it happen, ie "shopping" for magic items.
Maybe I should lose my grognard union card afterall... After a long-running 3.5 homebrew campaign I promised the players that in the next campaign they would have time for crafting and other pursuits (which the pace of the homebrew had not supported.) So I'm letting the system play out as written (or at least as I understand it.) And boy does it play out. If you're reluctant about the 1300 gp limit in Sandpoint wail until later in the AP.
As an illustration, my group just finished part 1 of Book 5 and have liquidated the treasure they've accumulated since they last left Sandpoint to deal with the problems of Book 4 (avoiding spoilers.) In total they have over 110,000gp between actual treasure and magic items they were not keeping for themselves. And that's having given at least one nice item away to allies they made in Book 4 and my not permitting them to sell Large-sized weapons for "book" value - my token insistence on some economic plausibility (who in Sandpoint or Magnimar would buy a +1 ogre hook?)
I'm glad to see I'm not alone in not allowing resale of Large-size or bigger weapons - especially of something like an Ogre Hook. I've replaced some of these items with other treasure to compensate, and as a result introduce items from books that post-date Runelords... and also things that may actually be useful for the players.
That said, my tabletop group may see some magic and traditional treasure revisions as well - seeing that there's no one wearing armor heavier than light (Bard, Unchained Rogue, and Universalist Wizard). That and I'm not really certain anyone would be interested in enchanted Goblin armor.
I save myself and my players unnecessary book-keeping and just let them have most of what they want. They just need to run it by me and if I think it's bad for the game I'll tell them that no matter where they go or what they do it's not available (boots of the earth!).
I assume they talk to merchants in their downtime and organise things in advance. I really can't see the merchants in town not helping the heroes of Sandpoint, especially not when the cut of the profit is likely to be more than worth it. I am not going to roleplay Malls&Mallrats (tm), it's boring.
If I was doing a more survivalist game with no access to a home base then things would be different.
I allow the sale of the large weapons if they can carry them. Mostly to blacksmiths who can use the metal obtained in other projects.
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Using the metal from a magical ogre hook in another project would probably negate the magic in the first place.
Personally, my spin on "ogre hooks" is that they are a funky-shaped axe. One might be able to posit re-hafting a magical axehead in order to make a magical ogre hook into a magical halberd, for example, but even that is a bit of a stretch.
I agree that I don't really want to spend lots of valuable game time playing out access to magic items. Since I don't like universal availability, pre-generating lists of magic item inventory is one way to deal with the situation. I admit that I routinely edit the lists before making them available to players - adding stuff and removing stuff. Especially if I know that one of my players is secretly yearning for an item that he can't acquire anywhere.
But the bigger the city, the more potential sources for magic items and the more plausible it becomes to make nearly anything available. It's just that having the full list of all the possible magic items in the game available for purchase at any time feels to me like we're robbing the concept of magic of much of its mystery.
The old grognard in me can't help fondly recalling the days when our first magic items weren't just +3 beatsticks, but relics from another age with history and legends behind them. Concepts like "wealth by level" and access to the "big five" item list just feel wrong.
I usually use common sense when determining what can and what cannot be readily bought. In the case of Sandpoint, a lot of very specific but cheap items for example are probably not available right away, but the merchants can order them in from Magnimar in a week or two. Some merchants could ask for a part of the cost up front, sometimes depending on their relationship with the character. So, even though they are "available", they are not actually always "readily available". I know it's not RAW, but I feel like it creates a slightly more complex market for the players to consider when getting their characters ready for adventures and exploration.
I made a spreadsheet with Sandpoint shops for my players, maybe you can use it.
Just curious. Why does a full, masterwork plate dragonhide armour cost 1800, when on the pfsrd it says that the same but non-masterwork costs 3300?
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I also made my party work for selling the items they looted off the ogres and giants in Books 3 and 4. Most places don't have a population of Large-sized creatures willing to purchase these things. Fortunately, Kaer Maga does with the troll augurs, which gave me an excuse to have the party visit Kaer Maga a few times during the campaign. If they sold the Large weapons elsewhere, I probably would have reduced the GP value significantly.
A friend of mine suggested that ogres and giants use runes to empower their magic weapons.
What I do is state "you cannot sell large-sized equipment" and "no one is interested in ogre hooks."
That said, I switched out a certain Ogre boss's ogre hook with a human-sized bastard sword (and gave him a couple levels to improve his to-hit to rectify for using an undersized weapon). With the rest of the Ogre Hooks, I added up the amount I was eliminating, and inserted a couple other magic items to make up the difference.
That way I could add some of the newer magic items found in more recent books and that were targeted more toward the players, rather than giving them lots of "vendor trash."
Later on, I also included the clay mentioned in one of the books (I think the one with Inner Seas Gods) that lets you resize a weapon by one category. The clay costs 1K gold (or 500 gold to make yourself) but would then allow some giant weapons to be resold. But I figure weapons made by giants would be of decent quality. Ogre hooks? Not so much.
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I can see replacing some of the large weapons with items that might be of more use to the party, especially when they're going to be far from any decent sized town where they might sell a more rare or expensive item. But for what it's worth, the entry for ogre hooks in Ultimate Equipment says "Despite their poor workmanship, the rarity and peril involved in getting ogre hooks make such items quite valuable." Maybe for collectors? I wouldn't think there would be much of a market in Turtleback Ferry (for example), but I could see them going for more than the usual 50% of list price in Magnimar.
And how many collectors are going to want five or six magical ogre hooks? Or the large number of non-magical ones you get from wiping out the ogres you're facing?
I found my policy worked fine, and allowed me to introduce more powerful items that weren't otherwise available.
Perhaps the root problem is claiming that *all* the ogres are armed with ogre hooks. Surely some of them might be wielding other weapons, and the listed weapon types in the book are a simple question of brevity - the designers not wanting to write out a full stat block for each and every ogre.
I mean, these ogres are ostensibly hard at work forging weapons for other giants, not just for other ogres. If some of them have spears, axes, swords and other sundries, that might take some of the work out of re-selling their loot once back in a decent sized town, like Magnimar.
But at some point, the PCs are going to absolutely need to hook up with a wizard or a Dwarven smith or somebody who can forge some decent arms & armor and other gear for them. They're going to need it, I suspect.
And now you will see what the Leadership Feat can be used for without breaking the game.
The beauty of Cohorts is that they level up even if they don't adventure with you. So you could do a Cleric Cohort or a Wizard Cohort and have them stay in Sandpoint... and use the money that the PCs are bringing in to craft more powerful magic items for the party. So the party takes a couple weeks to go to Turtleback Ferry and come back to find their cohort wizard crafted several magic items for them while they were gone, and their cohort cleric made a couple wands of cure moderate or serious wounds to help with healing up the party.
Their Followers could be people living in Sandpoint - the town guard are level 2 warriors, and the PCs could be providing them with heavier armor and better weapons (castoffs of their old magic items) to help protect the town while they are away.
Cohorts and Followers could also be used to run shops and the like as per the Ultimate Campaign book.
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And now you will see what the Leadership Feat can be used for without breaking the game.
The beauty of Cohorts is that they level up even if they don't adventure with you. So you could do a Cleric Cohort or a Wizard Cohort and have them stay in Sandpoint... and use the money that the PCs are bringing in to craft more powerful magic items for the party. So the party takes a couple weeks to go to Turtleback Ferry and come back to find their cohort wizard crafted several magic items for them while they were gone, and their cohort cleric made a couple wands of cure moderate or serious wounds to help with healing up the party.
Their Followers could be people living in Sandpoint - the town guard are level 2 warriors, and the PCs could be providing them with heavier armor and better weapons (castoffs of their old magic items) to help protect the town while they are away.
** spoiler omitted **
Cohorts and Followers could also be used to run shops and the like as per the Ultimate Campaign book.
I am doing exactly this, but also building up a Magical Guild. Sandpoint really needs a guild of magical crafts people so I decided to create one using the Leadership feat to help me gather up the people necessary to run a Guild style school of crafting.
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And now you will see what the Leadership Feat can be used for without breaking the game.
The beauty of Cohorts is that they level up even if they don't adventure with you. So you could do a Cleric Cohort or a Wizard Cohort and have them stay in Sandpoint... and use the money that the PCs are bringing in to craft more powerful magic items for the party. So the party takes a couple weeks to go to Turtleback Ferry and come back to find their cohort wizard crafted several magic items for them while they were gone, and their cohort cleric made a couple wands of cure moderate or serious wounds to help with healing up the party.
Their Followers could be people living in Sandpoint - the town guard are level 2 warriors, and the PCs could be providing them with heavier armor and better weapons (castoffs of their old magic items) to help protect the town while they are away.
That makes it seem a lot more workable. I have kept my players away from Leadership because they are relatively inexperienced I haven't felt as though they could handle running subsidiary characters during encounters. This take on Leadership is much more manageable, and I may open it up to them before starting Hook Mountain Massacre.
Just change the +1 ogre hooks into masterwork (the +1 damage is insignificant) and put in an equivalent amount of cash, potions or something else more interesting to make up the difference.
When this discussion comes up (which it does quite often) it's always about the ogre hooks, not about the +1 hide armour. OK, so it's only worth half as much as the hook, but it must be even less saleable. Hide armour? Worn by an ogre? Yuk. Whereas an OH is just a slightly inferior halberd so it's still martial and an OK weapon.
Actually, I don't allow the sale of any of the giant-sized magical equipment, with the exception of "artistic" pieces from Thassilonian time.
Replacing them with magic items later allows me to replace a dozen or so vender-trash items with one or two items that the party is actually likely to keep or find a use for.
I have allowed the sale of large magical armor on the premise that most armors are not one continuous piece but rather multiple pieces worn collectively. That in turn seemed to me to lend itself to reassembly, etc.
I don't allow the sale of large magical weapons because as stated by others I don't see any market for them - to me, they can't be disassembled and I'm not sure they're really equivalent to halberd-style reach weapons for medium creatures.
I'm less generous than Tangent101 - I didn't replace the hooks with anything else. The ogres don't carry loot idealized for medium creatures from civilized lands, they carry loot idealized for degenerate giants from the Storval Plateau. My group does trail WBL (which I just checked for the 1st time and they're 14th level in Book 5.) But that doesn't seem to harm them in the slightest. I know that when they finished both Book 3 and Book 4 they had over 100,000gp to "go shopping" (crafting and buying.)
Probably not a right or wrong answer here, DM's just need to decide on what's right for them and their group.
And now you will see what the Leadership Feat can be used for without breaking the game.
The beauty of Cohorts is that they level up even if they don't adventure with you. So you could do a Cleric Cohort or a Wizard Cohort and have them stay in Sandpoint... and use the money that the PCs are bringing in to craft more powerful magic items for the party. So the party takes a couple weeks to go to Turtleback Ferry and come back to find their cohort wizard crafted several magic items for them while they were gone, and their cohort cleric made a couple wands of cure moderate or serious wounds to help with healing up the party.
Their Followers could be people living in Sandpoint - the town guard are level 2 warriors, and the PCs could be providing them with heavier armor and better weapons (castoffs of their old magic items) to help protect the town while they are away.
** spoiler omitted **
Cohorts and Followers could also be used to run shops and the like as per the Ultimate Campaign book.
While I like the idea of crafting feats being opened up to noncasters more, and I have had good luck with adding a follower based encounter like you describe in Ironfang Legion, I maintain that Leadership is a bad feat. Not just because it grants more than any other feat. But because what it gives you is stuff that should happen naturally over the course of the story, regardless of feats. I think Paizo has tried to make this happen with various NPCs in the adventure paths, pointing out they could make a great cohort if someone takes the leadership feat... But then why not just have that NPC be willing to join the party if they have done stuff to earn trust or admiration?
I think Paizo has tried to make this happen with various NPCs in the adventure paths, pointing out they could make a great cohort if someone takes the leadership feat... But then why not just have that NPC be willing to join the party if they have done stuff to earn trust or admiration?
Absolutely!
My RotRL campaign has four players (and sometimes only three are present on a given gaming night). So they've had Shalelu along from book 2 through nearly the end of book 4 where we are now. As well as another NPC who started life as a 5th-level wizard in Magnimar, who fell in love with a PC female paladin of Shelyn.As far as loot is concerned, I've been fairly liberal in tossing in level-appropriate items that fit well for the party members, and they've pretty much ignored the large-sized armor and weapons, just assuming it would be worthless and too heavy to lug around. So the wealth curve has been maintained about on track.