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Post by friartook on Jul 21, 2015 16:42:18 GMT
Ok, I finally relented, and gave my PCs some loot. They are now obsessed with making their way to town to sell/buy. I had a really bad time doing this last time; they bought dogs and weird trade goods and gear. I've got one player who took 3 suits of half-plate from his fallen foes (forcing me to learn and institute carry capacity and encumbrance rules) that he is now lugging around hoping to sell somewhere. I'm resisting my urge to put them all into a scenario where they get stripped of gear. This "Video Game" loot mentality infuriates me. They're acting like they are playing Skyrim and it pisses me off That being said, I'm looking for advice on a couple fronts here: 1. How much buying/selling do you allow your players to engage in? Do you encourage or discourage the mentality I'm so unreasonably mad about? 2. How do you determine shop inventory? I'm reluctant to just let them "shop from the book". They are making their way to large metropolis where almost anything is available, so I will kind of have to then. But what about smaller communities? Has anyone found a resource that will randomly generate a shop inventory by town size or level? Or do you just not bother, let them shop from the book, and say no to anything the town/shopkeeper wouldn't have? 3. In general, how do you guys handle shopping; buying/selling; magic items/potions? Any input/advice is most welcome. 4. How do you deal with the availability of magic items? My inclination is to extremely limit their availability, but I may be wrong in that. 5. How much loot do you hand out on a normal basis? Everyone always wants to loot the bodies, but these recent bodies were the first ones they've faced where I could not realistically say, "Nah, no money, nothing good on 'em." And here I can't help but think of Multiplexer, an RPG blogger who consistently refers to D&D adventurers as "Murder Hobos."
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Samuel Wise
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Posts: 989
Favorite D&D Class: Warlock
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Post by Samuel Wise on Jul 21, 2015 17:10:28 GMT
1. How much buying/selling do you allow your players to engage in? Do you encourage or discourage the mentality I'm so unreasonably mad about? 2. How do you determine shop inventory? I'm reluctant to just let them "shop from the book". They are making their way to large metropolis where almost anything is available, so I will kind of have to then. But what about smaller communities? Has anyone found a resource that will randomly generate a shop inventory by town size or level? Or do you just not bother, let them shop from the book, and say no to anything the town/shopkeeper wouldn't have? 3. In general, how do you guys handle shopping; buying/selling; magic items/potions? Any input/advice is most welcome. 4. How do you deal with the availability of magic items? My inclination is to extremely limit their availability, but I may be wrong in that. 5. How much loot do you hand out on a normal basis? Everyone always wants to loot the bodies, but these recent bodies were the first ones they've faced where I could not realistically say, "Nah, no money, nothing good on 'em." And here I can't help but think of Multiplexer, an RPG blogger who consistently refers to D&D adventurers as "Murder Hobos." I don't know how much I'll be of help (I learned most of what I know from you guys, anywho): 1. Now I play with guys who are deeply, deeply ingrained in the video game mentality. Most of the time, however, it comes out in the murdering part (not the loot part). This is, most likely, because of my wonky (and extremely incorrect ways) of distributing loot. Money is scarce and I rarely, rarely give it to my players. Because of this they stopped looking for it (indeed, they stopped pickpocketing coins). I'm not saying my way is the good way (I don't think it is), but it is the best I have for now. (See my post in Prop Money for approx how much money appears in my game). 2. For some reason my PCs don't do lots of shopping (again it is probably my fault, doing things this way). 3. I've only sold magical items once. The seller was an old man with a wheelbarrow of weapons. That didn't go over too well as the players began steeling all the weapons. 4. I don't really limit the availability of magical items (something that I need to work on). However my players don't get serious magical items, but get items that are useful, but have a silly or not-too-strong effect. 5. See 1. This is just what I do and I know it is not the best or the greatest, it's just what I have done naturally. Just the other day I played my first game, ever, of D&D (it was Adventure League). I set my games up with adventuring/exploring/roleplaying in mind, I don't (though I should) think much of loot or leveling up. Because of this, I found it difficult playing with people who came to the table for a completely different reason. As someone who has only DMd until now, just the fact that the DM can say, "you found a dragon's loot underneath that rock" makes loot and levels a lot less exciting.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2015 19:25:38 GMT
Some quick guidelines I follow, I'm not strict about adhering to them but you may find them useful
Buying: Cities: Buying from the book is fine, just be setting appropriate. Elephants should be impossible to find almost anywhere. No war galleys in the mountains. Towns: Some limitations on weapons and armor, except possibly what the local guard/militia uses. Most of the items on the Adventuring Gear table are available. Villages: Highly limited inventory. They're produces of food and raw goods. Most other goods they produce (and possibly sell) are most useful for village life, not adventuring, except where the two roles overlap. Healing Potions: Only require an herbalism kit and herbs. Should be available even in villages (though more limited supply)
Selling: Shopkeepers want to make a profit. They won't buy damaged goods if they cannot easily repair and resell it. Smaller settlement is more difficult to resell stuff, especially armor. Half value for selling goods assumes the item is in good shape. Used gear may fetch a significantly lower price. Shopkeeper may refuse to buy items with a dubious appearance. He is under no obligation to believe whatever story the murder hobos concoct about where they found three sets of bloody and beaten half-plate.
Transporting: Encumbrance rules only cover weight, not volume. Use your imagination/common sense. 20 pounds of lead is way easier to transport than 20 pounds of feathers. Three sets of half-plate will not fit inside a backpack. If you've given them portable holes/bags of holding, take them away until looting everything in site becomes too much trouble.
Possible (and possibly horrible) alternative: Give them access to so much wealth they don't feel the need to loot everything and sell it. Any high end items you don't want them to buy are not available for purchase for whatever reason you decide.
Magic Items: Recommend you do not allow the trading of magic items for coin, in either direction.
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Post by friartook on Jul 21, 2015 19:34:52 GMT
Some quick guidelines I follow, I'm not strict about adhering to them but you may find them useful Buying: Cities: Buying from the book is fine, just be setting appropriate. Elephants should be impossible to find almost anywhere. No war galleys in the mountains. Towns: Some limitations on weapons and armor, except possibly what the local guard/militia uses. Most of the items on the Adventuring Gear table are available. Villages: Highly limited inventory. They're produces of food and raw goods. Most other goods they produce (and possibly sell) are most useful for village life, not adventuring, except where the two roles overlap. Healing Potions: Only require an herbalism kit and herbs. Should be available even in villages (though more limited supply) Selling: Shopkeepers want to make a profit. They won't buy damaged goods if they cannot easily repair and resell it. Smaller settlement is more difficult to resell stuff, especially armor. Half value for selling goods assumes the item is in good shape. Used gear may fetch a significantly lower price. Shopkeeper may refuse to buy items with a dubious appearance. He is under no obligation to believe whatever story the murder hobos concoct about where they found three sets of bloody and beaten half-plate. Transporting: Encumbrance rules only cover weight, not volume. Use your imagination/common sense. 20 pounds of lead is way easier to transport than 20 pounds of feathers. Three sets of half-plate will not fit inside a backpack. If you've given them portable holes/bags of holding, take them away until looting everything in site becomes too much trouble. Possible (and possibly horrible) alternative: Give them access to so much wealth they don't feel the need to loot everything and sell it. Any high end items you don't want them to buy are not available for purchase for whatever reason you decide. Magic Items: Recommend you do not allow the trading of magic items for coin, in either direction. Great advice nevvur, thank you. Didn't even think about the half-plate size. I think there are going to be some disadvantaged stealth checks in someone's future (the only way for him to carry so much would be to strap it all over the outside of his pack, clank-clank). I'm not going to take it away from him now, but I am going to make this clear.
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Post by rorrik on Jul 21, 2015 20:44:56 GMT
I'll take a stab at this, but my players have been very merciful. I think they're basically content to get character appropriate magical items in each dungeon and don't mind not coming to towns often. Just the one time they got paid for a job and said "where can we buy magical items?" I'll address that later. 1. My players spend a lot of time away from any big cities. I like to put them out in the wilderness where civilizations maybe existed once, but where there's not much shopping to do anymore. They don't seem to complain much, but again, I think that's because they're being rewarded with ancient artifacts I put in the dungeon for each of their characters. Frankly, for me in games like Skyrim money becomes meaningless and I mostly use the weapons and armor I find in caves and I help my players do the same. The other thing about being in the wilderness is that they don't carry anything that's worth less per pound than money unless it's food supplies and their own weapons and equipment. If I say "they're all wearing beat up plate mail" the players say "do any of us want to switch to plate mail? No? Okay, we leave it." 2. I like what Nevvur said about shop inventories by city size. I really like to create tables and so for any given shop they wander into I'll roll it's size and it's inventory and if they really want a scythe that's battle quality it might take them a few shops to find it. Especially with magic items, I roll what he happens to have, though in that case I make a special table for each major city based on the kinds of stuff the wealthy are willing to buy there. Most cities don't have an adventurer based economy. Here's an example from a city where the wealth was mostly controlled by suspicious, conniving, gnome aristocrats. Lots of magic, but mostly focused on mercantilism and self protection. In a small village my players will be lucky to find villagers willing to accept large denominations of ancient coinage in exchange for horses and trail rations. They just don't have much use for a handful of gold coins without an appraiser in town to assure them it's worth x silver marks by gold weight. Big cities will have appraisers, or if they're willing to work for it, coin collectors willing to buy old coins long out of use. 3. My shop keepers all have ranks in haggle, and they will not take a deal where they're not making a tidy profit, especially if it's goods that will be hard for them to move in their existing channels. Most shop keepers simply don't have enough in the till to buy a set of half plate, or in their whole shop to buy a vorpal sword. I don't use potions as written in my game, but instead will have herbalists selling various concoctions that can help up healing speed, but may have side effects. Often they'll be describing the effects of a psychedelic drug and my players will assume it's a potion of owl's wisdom or something. 4. Magic in my worlds is extremely expensive. The players I mentioned before who wanted to buy magical items made their way to a large city (as illegal aliens, since their merchant escort papers expired) and attempted to purchase items only to find they did not have nearly enough money. (Side-note, if they had, the cop outside the shop would have taken the fact they weren't with their caravan far more seriously and probably arrested them.) I did feel bad and let them rescue a noble and get enough reward to buy a few items, but only once I knew they weren't interested in some of the more game ruining items. 5. The loot I hand out is only what it is logical for the enemy to have. Bears have a hide if you're willing to take the time to skin it and carry the hide. The meat could make for several meals if you cure it, but without that effort it'll be bad in a day. The same applies for war parties of orcs, they carry shoddy equipment, trail rations, and very little money unless there's reason to think they recently hit a caravan and are on their way home. No one in my world is carrying around enough money to buy magical items without their mission being to go and buy those items. Significant sources of wealth come from dragon hordes, warlord treasuries, and being willing to collect all of the equipment the bandit chief bought for his men and invest in enough Haggle to sell it at a reasonable price (make this as big a pain as possible). I hope some of those ideas help. As far resources to create shop inventory, I'd just roll a size on 3d6, 2x this is the number of weapons, roll for 'em. Based on the number of items in the category, change the multiplier. Alternately, the 2*(3d6) could be the percentage chance they have any given weapon. Example: the shop rolls a 10, medium sized shop. "I want to buy a battle axe." Roll 1d100, get a 20, "No I'm sorry, no battle axes." and so on for each item they ask for. Adjust the multiplier to how you want your shops be supplied, of course. I use this to an extent in the table linked above, where a magic shop has a percentage chance of having a given weapon in stock in a +1 for example. You can see it in the first table where I refer to +1 as a "petty enchant".
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Post by friartook on Jul 21, 2015 21:01:28 GMT
This is getting me thinking a lot more about economics. Which is ironic as I mentioned Multiplexer; her blog deals frequently with the economic repercussions of a world where magic and murder hobos abound (the one article title I can recall was "Your Lawful Good King is an @$$hole).
I hadn't even thought about coinage, and that's a great point! Many places in Europe had this issue for a very long time. In Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, there is a scene where two Englishmen debate a trader at length regarding the provenance of the pennies in their coin purse, and whether or not these are legal tender and worth their stated value.
My current campaign is a "fast and loose" worldbuilding effort, so I am not going to make a big deal about coinage now. However, this will play a role in future campaigns. Thanks so much for the feedback!
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Post by Tesla Ranger on Jul 21, 2015 21:31:00 GMT
I'd encouraged that sort of attitude in past campaigns but I've been damping it down pretty well so far with this campaign. It's been my experience that doing a lot of inventory management takes more away from the game than it adds, at least for my players. After our first encounter in this campaign, our rogue suggested collecting the armor and weapons from the bandits they'd just taken out. I noted that in the process of said "taking out" they'd reduced any such gear to an effectively unsell-able state. They haven't inquired about it since and my impression is that they're happier for not having to consider it. So far as how I've been handling shops, I came up with some charts (which I'm attaching if anyone else finds them useful) based off the info in the PHB. Essentially, I compiled a list of everything I thought might be for sale in Village Shop or a City Market and then decided on a percent chance that that particular item might be in stock. If the player walks into a village's shop and wants to buy Hide armor, they'd roll their d100 and have an 80% chance that that item would be in stock at that store at that time. If it isn't then they could special order it (usually with a small fee) or wait until the store is restocked (1 week for villages, 2 days for cities) and re-roll. This lets me randomly generate any arbitrary shop on the fly and it's worked pretty well so far. I've also prepared 3-4 named shops in a major city of they're going to be in there for awhile. These shops have all their inventories written out ahead of time and they're usually the places that would sell magic items. Whenever the players go shopping I can hand them that slip of paper and they can pick what they want, if anything, from that. I've been really appreciating 5e's stance that magic shouldn't be routine. In our campaign, Villages have a chance of having Common Magic Items (Potions of healing, Potions of Climbing, 0 & 1rst lvl scrolls) but nothing more rare than that. Cities would definitely have common magic items and have a chance of having Uncommon magic items. I prepared a third chart (also in the PDF) to randomly generate what Uncommon magic items might be for sale in a city. As the DM, I'm really liking this setup. Aside from avoiding the "magic ladder", the PCs are finding solutions to their challenges that aren't based on using XYZ magic item. So far the PCs are about half way to level 5 and one of them has a magic sword and another has a homebrew equivalent to "Everlasting Rations" that they started with. They had an opportunity to pick up a Driftglobe (5e version of a Watch Lamp) awhile ago but weren't able to beat the boss. So far as encounters and rewards go, I've been sticking pretty close to the DMG and the treasure's been much, much lower than they would expect for 3.5. It's still been plenty for everything they need to do in 5e though (which mostly amounts to a few mundane purchases and living expenses). They're in a city where they have the option of buying certain magic items but so far they've decided to forgo buying any. Not because they don't have the coin (there's 3-4 simple Uncommon items they could definitely afford) but because they already have ways of achieving those same effects. There's a good chance they'll start picking up some more on some quests soon anyway. The players were all coming into 5e right after having played 3.5 for 2-3 years so they had the expectation that magic items and treasure would rain from the proverbial skies. I think they may have been a little disappointed when that wasn't immediately the case in 5e but they've been willing to indulge me so far. And now that it's been some weeks I think they're starting to appreciate it too. If nothing else they have a much easier time tracking inventory. So far as handling players who want to do the whole 9 yards when it comes to inventory management, I might suggest the following: * Implement a house rule that if it isn't written on an inventory sheet, they don't have it. This cuts down a lot on the potential quibbling when it comes to who has what. If something wasn't important enough for the player to write down, then when the PC reaches for it it won't be. Depending on your players this might require an occasional reminder/heavy foot but it makes things a lot smoother for everyone in the long run. Just remember that this rule isn't a punishment (or it shouldn't be), but more of a necessity. * Consider tasking/asking a player as the party quartermaster. As a DM I assign my loot to the party, not to individual players, and I leave it to them how they way to divvy it up. Aside from that, it's often handy to have one person keeping one list of everything the party's found (and preferably who claimed what). * Consider homebrewing the encumbrance rules. 3.5's encumbrance may be relatively realistic but it's heck to keep track of. Even before we switched to 5e we were using the rules introduced in 4e rather than 3.5's native rules. That system just uses a straight formula based on the PC's Strength score. STR * 10 = how much the PC can carry unencumbered STR * 20 = how much the PC can carry while encumbered (1/2 speed, some class features may not be available) STR * 50 = how much the PC can push/drag Attachments:Shops.pdf (287.45 KB)
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Post by friartook on Jul 21, 2015 22:01:02 GMT
Thanks for the great input everyone, its been immensely helpful!
Tesla: I should perhaps have made it clear that we are using 5e. The Encumbrance/carry capacity rules in 5e are fairly straight forward. A PC can carry 15*Str. I am implementing the optional encumbrance rules: at 5*Str they lose 10ft of movement speed, at 10*Str or above, they lose half their movement and have disadvantage on all physical (Str, Dex, Con) saves, attacks, and skill/ability checks (if I am remembering correctly).
I'll take a look at the Shops PDF. Thanks for sharing your work!
Here's where my thinking is at right now:
I am going to continue to make treasure scarce for now. The PCs have been working pretty much from starting cash so far, they got some loot last session, so they have spending cash now. Magic items in my world are very rare and almost never for sale in a shop. They would be artifacts or special items made to order or for a specific purpose. If I decide to add a horde of treasure somewhere down the line, its going to be realistically difficult to deal with.
Dealing with my "Skyrim" player: in order to carry the 3 suits of half plate strapped to his backpack, he would have had to completely disassemble them, store their parts and fasteners in pockets, and strap the big pieces to his pack using rope. This will make him noisy and awkward while wearing his pack. When he gets to town, and attempts to sell these suits to a the local armorer, he won't get much from them. Between the beating the armor took when its previous owners were dispatched, and the work needed to reassemble the suits, no self-respecting armorer would give much more than a pittance for the steel and spare parts.
For future: I will likely allow them to shop from the book, but reserve veto power over anything I don't think would exist in that area. I'm going to grind the "Video Game Looter" mentality out of them with brutal reality and by nit-picking everything they do on the corpse looting front.
Again, thank you all for your input!
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