Equipment, Weapons, and Armor Costs

[Severus Snape]

Ok, so I have a campaign going where the players finally beat the bad guys in the first dungeon, and they looted the steaming corpses and brought the weapons back with them to town so they can sell them. Which I have no problem with at all - if they want to sell the spoils to earn a few extra coins, I say let them.

My problem is with the book prices for stuff. 40 gold for a short sword? The party has 8 of them to sell. At book price, that's 320 gold pieces! 3 or 4 serious encounters, and the party could get enough stuff to sell and make enough money to retire. That's outrageous. So what I did is I seriously discounted the offer made (7 gold per) as I don't want everyone being rich. That might be a bit low, but I know the players will want to negotiate anyhow, and I don't want them to get a king's ransom for a few short swords.

Anybody else have a problem with the book prices on equipment?

[Blindscout]

Ok, so I have a campaign going where the players finally beat the bad guys in the first dungeon, and they looted the steaming corpses and brought the weapons back with them to town so they can sell them. Which I have no problem with at all - if they want to sell the spoils to earn a few extra coins, I say let them.

My problem is with the book prices for stuff. 40 gold for a short sword? The party has 8 of them to sell. At book price, that's 320 gold pieces! 3 or 4 serious encounters, and the party could get enough stuff to sell and make enough money to retire. That's outrageous. So what I did is I seriously discounted the offer made (7 gold per) as I don't want everyone being rich. That might be a bit low, but I know the players will want to negotiate anyhow, and I don't want them to get a king's ransom for a few short swords.

Anybody else have a problem with the book prices on equipment?

I view the book prices as the average that someone could expect to pay for a brand new, good quality item from a merchant. A group of PCs attempting to sell second hand equipment is not going to get even close to the book price, kind of like trading in or selling a used car. So cutting down what they are being offered is perfectly realistic imo, it also gives them some opportunity for good ol' RP haggling .

[novatomato]

*ahem, speaking as someone not in the campaign* We have a list of price increases for superior weapons, inferior weapons would have a similar drop in price. For example: a Dwarven Longsword (+1 strike and parry) costs initially 55 gp but the improvement in quality jacks that price up by 800% to 440 gp, that is as finely balanced a blade as can be made. conversely a blade that seems to be made in someones backyard with spare metal lying around (may not have any penalties to use but the quality is crap) would cost about an 800th of the price, so approximately 4 gold 4 silver.
So for those short swords the quality is low, not horrendously low but still not something you want to rely on, say its around one quarter to one fifth of the cost, so between 8 and 10 gp.

*as a player in the campaign* come on 40 gp! thats it! we should be getting a hundred a piece.

[strtkwr]

And don't forget, many of those items were probably damaged in the fight (and might not have been of the highest quality anyway). So some of the swords may not even be worth selling.

[t0m]

irl pawn shops tend to pay 20% of the price when buying things. used things usually sell for around 50% of the book price. so a 40g sword, used, is worth 20, bought @ 20% = 4 gold. they wont get rich doing that any time soon

[Cinos]

First, the costs in the book are for bright, shining new weapons off the line. I some how doubt that's what they looted, and even if it was, no store will buy for that because that's what they plan to sell it for, meaning there'll be no profit in it for them. To even approach that, the party would need to hope to sell to adventurers, rather then a shop, which means they'd have to compete with prices of the local shops, AND be pretty good salesmen to get past that "it smells like orc" and is likely a bit beat up.

Second hand armor should be near worthless. First armor generally needs to be fitted when it hits a new owner (straps adjusted, etc), and the size needs to be generally the same to be of any use, meaning it's a narrower field of buyers, AND they likely need to invest some just to make their armor comfortable. And unless your party poisoned the former owner in their sleep, chances are there's some holes in the armor. AND it has the same problems as the weapons above.

I'd make the baseline for resale 10% for weapons, 5% for Armor. Disposable weapons (throwing knives, etc), likely sell better to book value (say 15-20%), and anything with gold / ornamentation will be in the money. Magic items are a different beast as they are valuable. I'd say about 35-60% to shops, 75% - 100% if they go through the effort to sell directly to a user.