Is this just a holdover from prior editions? Half price is a really steep reduction and often seems like one of the most verisimilitude breaking aspects of the game. I can understand a fence taking a cut as a way of expediting sale of loot, though 50% still seems very high.
I'm coming at this question from a completely naive perspective, having no game design experience. I recently played Armored Core 6 and it sort of blew my mind that I could buy and sell parts for the exact same price - "that's ridiculous." But it seemed to work really well - change your load out in the hanger (town) and you can prepare for the field. It doesn't seem like magic swords should be like new cars, losing 50% of value when walking out the door with it. It seems like 2e already went partially in this direction with the ability to swap runes, and I think that is a good change.
AC6 has repair and ammo costs with each mission, which can be seen as returning the items to full functionality every time. Would selling items at full cost but having an upkeep of some kind work in 2e? What issues might it cause? What are the related systems that it would impact?
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Selling items at half price and being able to transfer runes are two pieces of the same design solution. The intent is to make finding loot that you want to use more interesting and fun than finding loot that is just a price tag.
The 50% sale price also helps keep the focus on the story of the game rather than looting everything you come across.
You can certainly tweak what percentage things sell for. There is already Automatic Bonus Progression which nearly removes the need for looting and selling items entirely. You could have items sell for full price too - as long as you are keeping in mind the change in player wealth and adjusting how much treasure the players are finding as a result.
Because that is really the balance point - the wealth by level progression. As long as players aren't able to afford to deck their characters out in purchased items at more than +2 of their own level, it shouldn't change the game mechanics balance much at all.
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I would argue that it is still around for keeping from Breaking Verisimilitude.
I think first edition had things it called Trade Goods that typically always traded for at value. In second edition they just mention exceptions being art objects and raw materials which trade at full value. (it is too bad they didn't go with a category of trade goods).
If I went into a store and bought some random object and went to some other random store and tried to get them to give me money for it, or stopping some random people trying to unload it, I'd probably consider myself lucky if I got 50%.
If you ask me, in rare instances I might have gotten close to 90-100%, much more cases would likely get closer t0 40-60%. And probably at least as many cases would get zero buyers or perhaps an offer for something like 10%.
So for me when you are defining 'what is being sold' and 'when exactly it is being sold', I consider a 50% as a reasonable 'average' that if anything probably is generous, as long as you are excluding the trade goods that just automatically are trading at near 100%.
Now, if an NPC approaches the PC saying... I've always wanted a crossbow and I see you have one, can I buy it off you. Then suddenly, they are trying to define the 'what' and 'when' so you can easily have the player demand full price, they aren't trying to drive the sale. They can even potentially ask for more than 100%, but that doesn't mean the buyer will be willing to buy for 100%.
Lets pretend however, the person approaching them, wants to buy the crossbow, right now, but they don't have cash, all they have is barley (which because of an overabundance for some reason, we will pretend is not considered a trade good). It might be reasonable to have the PC as for more. As the buyer is trying to force two transactions, one to buy the crossbow, the other to sell their barley for payment for the crossbow.
So the PC can easily justify 100% pay for the crossbow, assuming it is in good working like new condition. They can also look at the attempt to sell the barley as they are again defining the time and goods to be taken, to say they are only going to count the Barley at 50% value, similar to if they had tried to sell barley themselves.
So if the story involves an NPC who is by 'story' wanting to buy something. they should be willing to buy closer to the 100% price range. Buying from an lesser known vendor might be justification to cut the price a little bit, but it would also be a little conditioned on hoe much the buyer needs it and their actual timeframe on the need.
I'm sure that part of it is a holdover from first edition where it was an attempt to keep crafters from breaking the game via game economics. However the crafting system as it is in Second Edition makes that impossible at base reading of the rules. The 50% in that instance almost seems like a punishment.
But you can note that they seemed to intentionally leave it at 50%, since the game they made in between PF1 and PF2 was StarFinder. And in that game you only got 10% back. (and I'll admit that felt harsh)
But yes rules as written, you generally sell for 50% when the players instigate the sale, save for certain exceptions, which they list and the GM could choose as they deem fit.
If you say in the description of the town, that due to recent earthquakes or other natural phenomenon there are lots of injured and therefore there is a shortage of healing potions, and are none for sale. If a Pc had one and decided to offer it up for sale, it is reasonable to consider they might quickly get an offer for 100% value quickly, assuming the populace could afford it.
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If you watch some episodes of Hardcore Pawn or similar shows, they generally buy things for less than 50% of the price they intend to sell them for. Sometimes, significantly less.
That's to take account of the cost of running their business (the shop itself, bills, employees' wages, security, etc.), the tax cut, the risk of taking a fake or not functioning item or never finding any buyers for it, and their own profit.
Mechanically, it's harsh, but it is an important safety valve for balance concerns.
Especially with Runes, serious power can be bought with gp, it's the one X-factor that really cannot be allowed to "power creep."
Any sort of infinite money glitch or whatever would break the game wide open, hence the full 50% cut.
It does stretch verisimilitude a little bit, but as others have pointed out, it's not that far off.
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The crafting starting / pure minimum cost issue is, IMO, a very real problem that breaks the game another way.
It is frankly b@%$+#!* that it's better for a Master Crafting Alchemist to buy consumables than to make them, as you reduce the crafting cost at the same rate of the Earn an Income activity.
It would not break the economy for the Expert, Master, Legendary proficiency to, ya know, help one craft better. Instead, any improvement (just the + to checks) also improves the Earn Income in equal measure.
Out of the box, there really aught to be *something* to incentivize the player to use their skill, such as a 5, 10, 15% discount on the front-end prep cost or something.
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In order for my Alch to finally get a valid mechanical reason to actually justify crafting something I needed:
GM to accept variant crafting rules to enable time-crunching options at greater DC checks. Rush the finishing is the only way to exceed the Earn an Income that I know of.
GM to allow the Quick Setup Feat,
GM to completely houserule that the low sleep nights from a Ring of Sustenance each give me 1/2 downtime crafting days. (no chance of talking the party into spending days idle)
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So at L8, my Alchemist has finally made the first batch of hard L1 sunrods to use in their new (temp item made via free lvl up formula) Sun Dazzler.
Seems worth using as an opener, and I'm going to get all I can out of it while the Fort save is still on-level.
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That's how scared the devs are of economy-breaking shenanigans. The 50% re-sell is just one expression of that.
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snipI'm going to say here that 50% isn't exactly "random".
It is the exact cost of the materials used to make anything.
When you Craft something, the base materials, the cost that you cannot reduce no matter what, is 50% of the price.
This here *is* the part that completely breaks verisimilitude.
If a crafter in the party spends a *month*, possibly more, to reduce the cost of making an on-level item as much as allowed, then sells it, they have 0 monetary gain to show for the effort.
It's the exact equivalent of the Earn an Income activity.
Buying something for gp outright, and making + selling it being equivalent means the player's getting a serious short stick, and it removes all motivation to craft things.
The idea that someone can use Tea Lore or a juggling Performance to Earn an Income at the exact same rate as a Feat invested Magical Crafter is the cherry atop the s#~#swirl.
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I think the remastered crafting rules may give crafting more of a niche. IIRC recipes will just shorten the time needed to craft something, not be a requirement to make it in the first place. That's important because Paizo made the level of items and the level of formulas default to the same settlement level value. I assume they did this for simplicity, but formulas are cheaper and easier to store than items, so shops should really be stocking formulas beyond what items they could normally afford in their supply chain.
Craft SHOULD be a good option to use once your PCs have overtaken their settlement's level. Which could be level 1 in certain wilderness games. But it doesn't work if you can only buy formulas for items you'd be able to buy anyway. It also has the weird consequence of making the steam punk Inventor class a much stronger addition to a wilderness campaign, which is just... Wrong. That class should not function best in Quest for the Frozen Flame.
Removing formulas will at least give the Craft activity a niche.
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It should probably be less than half, honestly. Part of the sales price of the item is that the shop vouches for the item's craftsmanship, provenance, and the fact that it functions as advertised. "Random stuff PCs looted from corpses" has none of these things going for it.
Think of it like a pawn shop, they might offer you 20% of what they think they can sell it for, since they're operating a business and you're free to just not sell them the item if you're willing to keep it. But "half" is at least easy to calculate.
From my perspective the main reason that PCs sell at half price is to keep players from earning money by crafting things, which was a problem of PF1.
Was this the best solution? Not, necessarily but it is functional.
Instead of crafting to make money and selling that item, you perform the "earn income" activity and can do so with your crafting skill by working at some place, but how much you earn is dependent on the location and available tasks.
Does it break the illusion of reality? Perhaps some. But it keeps the game functioning as intended, which is more important.
Ultimately if you want to make adjustments to various parts of the system but ensure that ALL players in a group stay at roughly the same wealth by level (± 10%) that is ultimately what matters.
not really.
as someone that used to both make stuff (jeweller), and then had both a shop to sell them or sold them wholesale, and later on had to close my shop:
if i would to make something and randomly show up to a shop and say "here, buy this" i wouldnt expect to recoup not even my materials.
when i was selling in my shop i had a much higher margin. when i was selling wholesale i had lower margins but sold bigger quantities. when i closed my shop and had to sell everything in it, i went for about a 50% price to get rid of my stock.
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If a crafter want to Earn profit, it is much more involved than simply making an object. Arguably it is more important to find a person to sell said object first rather than making the object itself. That's why things like tradeshows for wholesalers exist to begin with.
That (creating stuff that people need, finding buyers, making them, selling them), in game, would translate much more to the abstruct Activity of "Earn Income" rather than the Create an Item. An Activity that someone with the Craft skill can do when he wants to "set up a shop for a month to make and sell items".
You did pick an example where the purchase /sell value is completely disconnected from the materials needed and labor value. Luxury goods are their own can of worms entirely twisted by perception. It's an achievement to even sell something self-made at a jewelry shop, considering how much name/brand matters, multiplied by whatever shop/market capture is going on.
Golarion is a setting where the actual "true" value of items like healing elixirs, ect have faaaaaar less modern economic nonsense twisting prices up or down.
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For me, the illusion break comes from thinking of Earn an Income as "get a job" while crafting is "do it yourself"
For those two to be equal, you need to be paid perfectly 100% of your labor's value, which is not happening. Your boss, and however many boss bosses, all need their cut.
It's like a cobbler earning exactly the same if he makes and sells in his own shop, or he works in a factory making shoes.
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Again, I'm 100% in agreement that the economy must be rock solid, and am fine enough w/ the 50% sell value. Illusion-breaking sure, a bit. "Used" arguments aside, items are defined by their function, you find a magic Rune and it works perfectly, or it does not.
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For me, I evaluate a crafting system as **functional** depending on how much it gets used.
Right now? I am crafting sunrods because I found ONE circumstance where a L8 item is fueled by L1 items, I can skip actually making the L8 item via alchemy, AND I've got a GM to hand me extra crafting time completely against the rules.
The crafting system is **completely non-functional from a mechanical standpoint.** If you craft, it's probably for RP reasons.
Looking again at the Income Earned chart, I'm also understanding that it is a big source of the frustration.
It does not scale at all like the cost of goods does.
While items L 4-6 range are spiking in price like crazy, the Earn an Income is lagging so far behind it's just sad.
Even though the chart is made to allow to for greater training to offer better rewards at the same task level, the FIRST TIME you can get 1 more gp for being a Master is at task L 10 ! Even though it's possible at L7, there's no crafting nor monetary boon whatsoever to that skill.
Even with the auto-crit success, my L8 butt could earn the 4 gp a day, crafting or Earning.
That sucks, and all this crafting talk does not address the big elephant in the room.
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Sidequesting.
If you are in town, it's supposed to be normal to ask around for adventuring jobs. Maybe 70% of it is handwaved with a Survival roll to find ___, another roll to open ___, and then one quick combat or whatever, but that's a part of the setting of Golarion, whether or not the characters are Pathfinder agents.
Even better is that a "let's have a day around town" always means the party is split, each doing their own personal thing to Earn an Income or RP a bit. Meanwhile, a sidequest keeps the party together and may not even take any more table time.
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Because the item prices skyrocket so quickly, the GM now has to either actively avoid any loot having an iLvl over 3, or one quick sidequest, even when sold at 1/2 value, is over a month of crafting/Earn incoming.
Meaning any self-aware player has ZERO reason to spend a possible adventuring day on their butt in town for such activities.
The idea of crafting has basically become a bit of flavor "that exists"
I don't have much experience w/ ttrpgs, so I cannot say how pf2e compares.
What I can say is that crafting, and downtime income in general, is non-functional. If you're a GM, help your players out and be real w/ any Alchs or other crafters. A downtime day or two can be a great tool to get your players integrated w/ the town, but be *sure* they know sidequesting is an option.
[...]
Ultimately if you want to make adjustments to various parts of the system but ensure that ALL players in a group stay at roughly the same wealth by level (± 10%) that is ultimately what matters.
Yeah, that's a really tricky thing.
I'm not 100% sure it should be a design goal, but if it is, it is not at all being met.
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Before he died from rolling four nat 1s in a row, the party's Monk had a huge excess of gp. Even when directly poked about buying something he might find useful, the guy punches stuff.
Very minimal gear required. He didn't take much of the found equipment, and didn't spend much gp at all.
.
Meanwhile, my little Alchemist has been broke the entire campaign.
A L8 formula is 25gp, while Earn an Income is 3gp per day.
I get 2 free on-level formulas, and that's it.
Every bomb, every elixir, **every lesser-->moderate** upgrade costs the Alchemist a serious amount of gp.
Now, if Tea Lore rewarded less income than Alchemical Crafting, it could still balance, at least a bit better.
.
For a while, I did not even have every kind of bomb on-level, I just had to ration that badly. And after L4, "the settlement level is 4, it does not sell formulas higher than that."
So now I'm lucky enough for there to be a delivery service to Absalom, but that's a week delay in world-time, which is enormous. And of course, I've got to pay up-front.
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All of this could work and be a downright interesting and engaging part of playing an Alchemist. Instead, all income earners are equal, but the class's monetary costs are absolutely not.
When my party was selling their last batch of items, my GM had the 1/2 sell value of a Horn of Fog my character was holding go into my purse only, not split among the party like other unused magic gear. I can only be 85% ish sure he did that on purpose, as he cut me off when I was trying to point it out.
That kind of underhanded gp equalization should not be something a GM ever has to do, but I certainly needed it. It's the first time I've had >50gp leftover in my purse, and that's mostly because the L7 & L8 Alch items kinda suck.
stuffWhat gives you the impression that alchemical or magical items are NOT luxury goods?
Normal citizens don't go around buying sunrods. They buy torches (maybe oil and lanterns if they are rich).
A "comfortable" cost of living is 1gp/week.
A single sunrod is almost as much as a whole month of expenses for a well off individual.
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Same thing for trust (brand names). Why would they buy from you, that's just a roaming vagabond, when the general store down the road is being owned by Mr. John who had it for 3 generations now and your grandpa was buying from his grandpa?
Luxury as in the name on the handbag adds $ to the price.
In golarion, no one cares who made the sunrod, and any artistic flair or carefully checkered grip is not going to earn any more in a sale.
It's the item being able to perform it's function. A rune works, or it does not. Only a literal noble would pay more for something's provenance in that setting.
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Trying to compare Golarion's market to modern day is close to impossible.
The adventurer does not care what little crafter stamp is on the bottom of the Everburning Torch.
And while food/lodging may be affordable, the life of an adventurer is not that.
If you don't have magic items, you'll die. It may have some upsides somewhere systematically, but Runes are a huge source of essential prowess, and are non-optional.
Casters need spells, Alch's need formulas. If the game thinks 25 weeks of "comfortable" living is worth a single folio of inked paper, it sure as hell better support that within its systems.
It doesn't.
It needlessly impoverishes players/characters for daring to pick classes that need a book w/ stuff in it.
FFS. That formula buy mechanic is so stupid in so many ways. The *recipe* for the same bomb's moderate-->greater version costing 10x.
Can't loan & copy it down, and it's explicitly non-magical, written instructions. Can't even resell the formula for half! Can't get more "f~+# you" than that.
Countless other forms of character training and power acquisition are hand-waved, yet trying to have a decent number of formulas per level will break an Alchemist.
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The issue is not the concept of the Alchemist's mechanics.
It is that the Alchemist reveals how broken many aspects of the economy are, and in ways that always hurt the player character.
The Alchemist cannot avoid the absurdity of the Formula mechanic, ect.
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Btw, torches are mostly an invention of hollywood. Large open flames like that are expensive, dangerous, and overall no-bueno.
Oil lamps are some of the oldest historical artifacts we've ever found.
stuffAll that but you didn't answer the question.
You are trying to peddle luxury goods, goods that only the minority of the population even cares about, to a store for which you are a stranger.
Why does it sound unlikely to you that you don't get to recoup your costs making said items?
Casters need spells, Alch's need formulas. If the game thinks 25 weeks of "comfortable" living is worth a single folio of inked paper, it sure as hell better support that within its systems.It's almost as if what's in the paper, the knowledge, is expensive and not the page/ink (which are cheap Btw).
Money being a gatekeeper for knowledge more than tracks for medieval societies.
I mean, safeguarding recipes and asking exorbitant prices for them is pretty realistic.
Not, it is not realistic. First and foremost, the lack of an option to copy from a shop. The reason Formulas are not items in one's inventory is to block resale. The game shot itself in the leg by saying it's just an hour to copy, and takes cheap materials of paper and ink.
Because they try to hide it by omission (no exact rule against it), there IS an infinite money glitch.
Selling Formulas. It takes an hour to copy out a 25g L8 formula. RaW, there's no rule I know of to block the player from selling them.
If allowed to sell at half price, that's 12.5 g per hour. Even at 10%, the 2.5 g per hour is a huge multiplier over the Earned Income.
So instead, the game as-is makes a wacky-harsh money tax for players, and tells them to just suck it.
Nothing about formulas in pf2e is realistic, I'm sorry.
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As far as RL stuff goes,
For a long time, a sturdy book was the huge expense that kept knowledge at a high price. The labor of a scribe was also a significant cost.
When technological progress changed that, that kind of knowledge exploded.
The Catholic Church was so worried about the spread of knowledge (the real bible), they kept in a dead language, and made illegal copies/translations the highest of crimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Tyndale
That didn't do much to slow it down once the cat was out of the bag.
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A crafting guild keeping a recipe secret is the complete opposite of having the usable formula available for purchase. Or the "oh sure we have the bomb formula for sale. Not *that* version of the bomb, only the less-good version."
There is no "realistic" way to swing the vast disparity in low and high Lvl formula cost, nor a high cost to begin with.
If paper and ink cost X, and a scribe's wage is Y, there is no way to STOP the land's scribes from "printing money" until the price of said formulas go down.
The Catholic Church couldn't do it, and they had magic threats of god/hell and unprecedented social power (via being the only way to get married, ect).
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I take issue with all the inappropriate excuses. It's okay to say it does not make sense, doesn't function mechanically, ect. Defending a problematic system w/o merit only hurts said system.
Even if the Formulas page is a surprisingly strong albatross working it's damnedest to strangle the Alchemist,
this is one small game mechanic.
It's not the end of the world, and a few bits of homebrew, like auto-upgrading item ranks, can ease the pain-point significantly.
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The crafting system is **completely non-functional from a mechanical standpoint.** If you craft, it's probably for RP reasons.
Looking again at the Income Earned chart, I'm also understanding that it is a big source of the frustration.
It does not scale at all like the cost of goods does.
While items L 4-6 range are spiking in price like crazy, the Earn an Income is lagging so far behind it's just sad.
Even though the chart is made to allow to for greater training to offer better rewards at the same task level, the FIRST TIME you can get 1 more gp for being a Master is at task L 10 ! Even though it's possible at L7, there's no crafting nor monetary boon whatsoever to that skill.
Even with the auto-crit success, my L8 butt could earn the 4 gp a day, crafting or Earning.
That sucks, and all this crafting talk does not address the big elephant in the room.
It is true that crafting is worse than earning an income. But earning an income will only let you buy things that are in the market. Where crafting comes into play is that you can have access to something that may not otherwise be available to you at the market.
The one thing that I do feel bad for crafting is that it is worse than Earn an Income because of how the time requirements work out. But crafting can be done even when you are not in a town with work to do, and provide access to things that aren't in that town. As a GM, I would let a character use crafting to make an Earn an Income check (which is okay by default) but flavor is as them crafting an item themselves. So that crafting isn't worse than Earn Income when the items is commonly available.
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The other side of it is: there is no guarantee that there will be Earn Income opportunities at your level. I realize that there will be a lot of handwavium involved there, but that's how it goes. The general guideline is that the Task Level be no higher than the Settlement Level.
So, if you are a skilled crafter and you're stuck in a village (Settlement Level 0-1) you may be far better off spending your time and gold at Crafting something you need instead of working at mediocre jobs, because Crafting always uses your level as the task level.
I've leveraged this a lot in PFS, as Earn Income is capped at L-2. As my PFS Bomber is Field Commissioned (12 days of Downtime per Scenario) I always end up saving more money on my Alchemical consumables than I could have Earned.
The other side of it is: there is no guarantee that there will be Earn Income opportunities at your level. I realize that there will be a lot of handwavium involved there, but that's how it goes. The general guideline is that the Task Level be no higher than the Settlement Level.
So, if you are a skilled crafter and you're stuck in a village (Settlement Level 0-1) you may be far better off spending your time and gold at Crafting something you need instead of working at mediocre jobs, because Crafting always uses your level as the task level.
I've leveraged this a lot in PFS, as Earn Income is capped at L-2. As my PFS Bomber is Field Commissioned (12 days of Downtime per Scenario) I always end up saving more money on my Alchemical consumables than I could have Earned.
With Alchemists needing to buy formulas, or be stuck with 2 items per level, being stuck in a low level settlement means you will be spending all available downtime inventing formulas, or reverse-engineering if you are lucky.
I don't know if PFS ignores that, but it's a big problem.
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If the GM allows inventor, you're L7, and you've got your full Lab with you, of course. Otherwise, by the rules, you can't add items to your book.
If all that, you can spend 4 days to get each item unlocked, spending full formula price.
You have enough time to add 3 total items to your list. If you want to save a few gp, **4gp per day at L9** go for it.
You are absolutely right that crafting allows for full Earn Income so long as the workshop + materials + formula are there.
The issue is that it's still a horrid use of time.
How much fallen enemy loot will that 4gp a day cover? A +1 weapon rune is 35gp, a single one sells for 17.5.
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Being in a low level settlement is a uniquely bad time for an Alch, to say the least. I honestly don't know what my GM would do if Abomination Vaults didn't have the Absalom courier delivery.
Can't think of another class mechanic like that, where they are just completely kneecapped if they cant get to a settlement with a "high level" that has the right books to sell.
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The other side of it is: there is no guarantee that there will be Earn Income opportunities at your level. I realize that there will be a lot of handwavium involved there, but that's how it goes. The general guideline is that the Task Level be no higher than the Settlement Level.
So, if you are a skilled crafter and you're stuck in a village (Settlement Level 0-1) you may be far better off spending your time and gold at Crafting something you need instead of working at mediocre jobs, because Crafting always uses your level as the task level.
I've leveraged this a lot in PFS, as Earn Income is capped at L-2. As my PFS Bomber is Field Commissioned (12 days of Downtime per Scenario) I always end up saving more money on my Alchemical consumables than I could have Earned.
With Alchemists needing to buy formulas, or be stuck with 2 items per level, being stuck in a low level settlement means you will be spending all available downtime inventing formulas, or reverse-engineering if you are lucky.
I don't know if PFS ignores that, but it's a big problem.
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If the GM allows inventor, you're L7, and you've got your full Lab with you, of course. Otherwise, by the rules, you can't add items to your book.
If all that, you can spend 4 days to get each item unlocked, spending full formula price.
You have enough time to add 3 total items to your list. If you want to save a few gp, **4gp per day at L9** go for it.
You are absolutely right that crafting allows for full Earn Income so long as the workshop + materials + formula are there.
The issue is that it's still a horrid use of time.
How much fallen enemy loot will that 4gp a day cover? A +1 weapon rune is 35gp, a single one sells for 17.5.
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Being in a low level settlement is a uniquely bad time for an Alch, to say the least. I honestly don't know what my GM would do if Abomination Vaults didn't have the Absalom courier delivery.
Can't think of another class mechanic like that,...
Wizards and witches, most likely. Pretty sure spell access would be settlement level gated as well. But you can at least heighten your existing spells, which often essentially grants new spells for things like invisibility.
But honestly the alchemist just has a ton of problems like this. Stuff that adds needless complexity or taxes the class in unfun ways. Among the house rules I like is allowing alchemists to "heighten" their lower level formulas for free. I would also get rid of the signature items thing and just let Advanced Alchemy use the normal crafting in batches of four rule.
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Typically it's for rarity or availability reasons - i.e. the PC's can't buy or find some object they really want, so they craft it.
The only issue with this is that you have to buy the formula so the only way it helps with rarity/availability is if you find/buy a formula with the rarity/availability so you can make them elsewhere which only really matters for consumables.
PFS is extremely generous with such things as buying formulae and buying spells. Basically, if you have access to it (ie, not Uncommon or Rare, and there are exceptions) you can get it.With Alchemists needing to buy formulas, or be stuck with 2 items per level, being stuck in a low level settlement means you will be spending all available downtime inventing formulas, or reverse-engineering if you are lucky.
I don't know if PFS ignores that, but it's a big problem.
It's really not about earning much money. It's a question of, what do you do with your downtime? In PFS you always earn downtime. And I've found making a batch of those consumables that I want on hand without committing daily resources has been a good use of that downtime. More profitable than Earn Income, definitely.The issue is that it's still a horrid use of time.
How much fallen enemy loot will that 4gp a day cover? A +1 weapon rune is 35gp, a single one sells for 17.5.
Being in a low level settlement is a uniquely bad time for an Alch, to say the least. I honestly don't know what my GM would do if Abomination Vaults didn't have the Absalom courier delivery.
Can't think of another class mechanic like that,...
Sure you can! Wizards and Witches are in the same boat when it comes to expanding their spellbooks/what their familiar knows. Wizards need access to resources they can Learn A Spell from; Witches need access to Scrolls to feed to their familiar (or Learn a Spell as well.)
Don't get me wrong; I know the Crafting subsystem is awkward as hell and often isn't worth using. There are times when it is worth it though. And I've heard that the Remaster may be doing something about the chicken/egg formula problem. We shall see.
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Is this just a holdover from prior editions? Half price is a really steep reduction and often seems like one of the most verisimilitude breaking aspects of the game. I can understand a fence taking a cut as a way of expediting sale of loot, though 50% still seems very high.
I'm coming at this question from a completely naive perspective, having no game design experience. I recently played Armored Core 6 and it sort of blew my mind that I could buy and sell parts for the exact same price - "that's ridiculous." But it seemed to work really well - change your load out in the hanger (town) and you can prepare for the field. It doesn't seem like magic swords should be like new cars, losing 50% of value when walking out the door with it. It seems like 2e already went partially in this direction with the ability to swap runes, and I think that is a good change.
AC6 has repair and ammo costs with each mission, which can be seen as returning the items to full functionality every time. Would selling items at full cost but having an upkeep of some kind work in 2e? What issues might it cause? What are the related systems that it would impact?
I am under the impression that a 100% mark up is fairly standard for 'real world' businesses when it comes to items that aren't likely to sell reasonably quickly: Money tied up in inventory that haven't sold yet can't be used for anything else, so the longer you expect it to sit on the shelf, the less you can afford to spend on acquiring it.
If you expect the 'turn time' on the item to be a week or so, you can afford a much narrower profit margin because you can re-invest the funds right away:- Paying 50g for an item that will sell in 1 year for 100g will earn you a 50g profit for the year
- Paying 8g each week for an item that will sell in 1 week for 10g will earn you a 104g profit for the year.
If you really don't like the 50% vendor value rule, you could always try Starfinder with its 10% vendor value rule...
In pf1e, I had a PC who made a Thrallherd (psionic version of Leadership feat) and he wanted to set up a veritable sweatshop of mind-controlled Thralls crafting items to make money to start a Religion and build Temples all over the world. I agreed because it sounded rad as heck tbh, but we decided for game balance reasons to keep his "Religion Gold" separate from his "PC's Gold", because he was making a crapton of extra gold and we didn't want him showing up to a level 8 encounter with a +5 Brilliant Energy Greataxe and a Ring of Three Wishes.
So I've seen what crafting looks like when it's done well and tbh it really did get out of hand, so keeping the two gold piles separate was an absolute must.
TLDR: the reason PC's sell items at 50% is purely for WBL game balance
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My main takeaway from this thread is that I should start introducing more quirks and cursed items to my parties that don't come from trusted sources.
That’s a pretty cool idea, frankly.
My takeaway from this thread is that some players give RPG economics lots of thought (and are willing to defend their positions when pressed) while some (myself included) have no issues with the rules as written.
Additionally, some people seem to lose the role-playing aspect of this TTRPG and like the min/max approach to character building. Every table is different, and the best way (as I see it) to find the right balance is to talk to your GM. The GM is in full control of the economy, etc., and can run the game as they see fit - rules as written or otherwise.
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My takeaway is that the formula change in the remaster (not needed but reduces prep time if you have it) will be welcome and hopefully The alchemist rework addresses it's pain points. Players not being able to go beyond the wealth by level table is perfectly fine to me. If my players are building an empire it's going to be bc I provided them the gold to do so, not bc they found a money glitch