D&D Geekitude: Magic Item Pricing

[kent_allard_jr]

I'm not happy with the rules for buying and selling magic items in 4th edition D&D, and no one else in my 4e group is, either. So... you can only sell items for 1/5th their default cost? But if you want to buy them from someone else, you have to pay full price? At first glance, this seems to be simple prejudice against PCs (who must have some "player aura" that NPCs can detect). I think I understand the game-balance reasoning behind it -- players would have a huge advantage if they could exchange the items they find in dungeons for the items they want of the same level -- but I'd prefer a convincing game-world explanation.

Here are a few justifications I can think of:

1. The stuff that PCs find, in dungeons, is old and beat up. If you assume that magic items suffer wear-and-tear, then they should sell for less used than new. Granted, there aren't any durability rules in D&D, nor should there be; but one could argue that they aren't necessary, because PCs upgrade equipment all the time. NPCs generally do not; they want a magic sword that will last for decades, not weeks; and one that's been smacked into a hundred stone-golems will be worth a lot less to them.
   
2. PCs generally acquire items illegally, through grave-robbery or ... well, just robbery. This stuff can't be sold in the open; it has to be sold to a fence, who certainly won't pay market price for them.
   
3. The market for magic items is very, very small. There aren't many people in the world with 325,000 gold pieces; even fewer want to blow it all on Boots of Balance. If PCs go through all the trouble to make an item, that's probably because it's really useful to them. Few others would value it so highly.
   
4. When player characters spend money to make an item, the money isn't just for materials. It's also for renting a forge (or a workbench), hiring skilled craftsmen, and (perhaps) learning a special ritual to make it.

DMs should decide which of these factors are responsible for the price differentials. If they don't apply, then players should be able to buy the equipment for less, or sell it for more. For example, if a PC makes a magic item, and then immediately sells it, it should sell for more than 1/5th the official purchase price, because the first factor isn't an issue. If they acquire an item lawfully, condition 2 won't apply, and the sale price should be higher. If factor 4 makes sense in your world, then PCs should be able to make duplicate items for less than the full sale price, and so on.

Comments

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Do you realize what it costs in security to run a magic item shop? If a PC happens to run across a random NPC who wants to sell an item, it should cost the same as what a PC could sell it for. But for a PC to have a known location he can go shopping, the PC is going to pay dearly, just as s/he would to commission a new piece.

[wellgull.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a good opportunity for an insurance system.

(see, this is why I can't play D&D. I'd spend all my time in whatever town we came across, coming up with schemes...)

[avram]

Player-characters are inherently untrustworthy. They're grave-robbing sociopaths, after all; everyone knows that. The low price NPCs are willing to pay for goods bought from PCs reflects the NPCs' fear of getting ripped off.

[kokoinai.livejournal.com]

I would point out the 1/5th pricing is only to give the GM control over what magic items the party gets: if you don't care about that (you're fine just giving one magic item of level N, instead of a specifc magic item of level N) then there's no reason to prevent selling at full price.

Secondly, of the many things you can accuse D&D 4E of being, simulationist is not one of them.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

I am aware of both these things. Still, an RPG should have better justifications than "because I say so." All RPGs should be "simulationist" to a certain extent. They may simplify, may use abstractions, and their sense of "reality" may be far different from our own, but they should at least make sense in their own terms. If your first reaction is, "that makes no sense," then at the very least the game-world justifications need to be made plain.

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

Another rationale -- all magic items have, if not a baseline sentience, a sort of sense of ownership. They'll accept transfer through force of arms, or being found after abandonment, and even sharing among brethren-in-arms, but they'll not accept something as tawdry as simple sale. At least, they won't without an accompanying ritual, the cost of which vendors need to take into account as part of their expenses when buying and selling magic items.

It's also why, even in the christmas-tree days, the magic item shopkeeper wasn't the baddest motherfucker for miles around.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I like your thinking - although I tremble at the magic-item-life-expectancy bookkeeping 1 implies and the integrated, certified, thoroughly modern economy of 2, that just happens to have great big dungeons full of loot alongside it. 3 makes perfect sense, but implies a magical Craigslist solution - if no such solution exists yet, I would expect my players to invent it.

I like bigscary's appeal to Marcel Mauss, though: it's just not yours if you acquired it by illegitimate means. This strikes me as a brilliant way to completely destabilise the whole dungeon-crawling, loot-snatching structure of the game, in the hopes of turning it into something more interesting.

Maybe there's a ton of cursed or mildly cursed magic items out there (somewhat per bigscary): maybe one could add a mechanic to making items, that they're highly likely to turn out wonky in some way. The cost to make an item reflects jettisoning some false starts on the way to creating a product that isn't obviously flawed. Items the players pick up off the back of an ogre are uncertified, and therefore risky - on a par with going through the alchemy guild's dustbins for almost-right cast-offs.