Selling loot (wealth advantage and time spent)

[mirtexxan]

Hi guys,
I have a quick question about selling loot.

It seems that the rules highly suggest that the wealthiest delver sells the loot for the entire party... but are there any limitations in place? It feels to me very "cheap" to just pool character points into a single delver with wealthy and then the entire party will have a huge profit for this, especially if the wealthy PC is a team player.

And regarding another potential "limitation" on the inflaction of wealth... How much time does the selling takes? Does it depends on the loot being sold to different merchants? To the lump amount of loot to be sold in general?

So, how do you manage selling loot in your game?

[sjmdw45]

If you take a dependency on a single wealthy character, the only limitation is that you're now dependent on a single wealthy character. If the wealthy elven bard sells $10K of loot for $10K instead of $4K and says, "okay, let's split $6K of this evenly between everyone, but I want to keep $4K to buy healing potions and spell scrolls to help the party," they're not doing anything wrong[1]. Some people enjoy the gear and equipment minigame more than others and if they choose to invest character points in getting better at it, while still helping everyone else, that's okay.

As for how long it takes, I just make it happen at the end of an adventure during downtime, as Exploits suggests. If players wanted to do it during the middle of an adventure I'd eyeball it: 1-3 days sounds reasonable in a large city for selling most items.

[1] The wizard who casts Invisibility on everyone but Flight only on himself, because he doesn't want a -10 penalty to all his spells, is likewise not doing anything wrong.

[mirtexxan]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

As for how long it takes, I just make it happen at the end of an adventure during downtime, as Exploits suggests. If players wanted to do it during the middle of an adventure I'd eyeball it: 1-3 days sounds reasonable in a large city for selling most items.

Maybe I'm missing something about the Downtime. Shouldn't it be calculated in number of weeks? Or the assumption is to just eyeball it, and that's it?
Because sometimes the rules assess the number of downtime activities per day, and sometimes per the entire downtime.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by mirtexxan

Maybe I'm missing something about the Downtime. Shouldn't it be calculated in number of weeks? Or the assumption is to just eyeball it, and that's it?
Because sometimes the rules assess the number of downtime activities per day, and sometimes per the entire downtime.

It's an eyeball based on the tenor of Exploits pg. 15-16, which gives the distinct impression that selling stuff happens "at the end of the adventure" as a relatively atomic event. E.g. if you go strictly by pg. 16, "For You, A Special Price", there is only one merchant involved per selling spree.

By eyeballing it as 1-3 days I'm actually probably requiring more time than the RAW call for, because I don't actually think the ideal buyer for broadswords is necessarily the ideal buyer for silk pantaloons and jars of cinnamon, etc. I'm assuming that the Wealthy PC has to shop around a bit to find the best price.

If it took weeks to finish the adventure and sell loot, I am assuming pg. 15-16 would be written differently, and would mention the weeks of effort explicitly as part of the rules for selling. E.g. instead of "no repeated attempts (p. 7) until after the party brings its next haul to town!" it would say "no repeated attempts until three weeks have passed."

[mirtexxan]

Thank you very much for the clarifications! :)

[Harald387]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

If the wealthy elven bard sells $10K of loot for $10K instead of $4K and says, "okay, let's split $6K of this evenly between everyone, but I want to keep $4K to buy healing potions and spell scrolls to help the party," they're not doing anything wrong

I think really that if the same wealthy elven bard sells $10k of loot for $10k instead of $4k and says "okay, you five split this $8k and I'm keeping $2k for my own personal use" that's still okay: everyone's coming out ahead, the bard just comes out more ahead. "Having more money to buy better stuff" is the superpower he paid for instead of, say, Weapon Master or three more levels of Magery or whatever.

[sjmdw45]

It seems that the rules highly suggest that the wealthiest delver sells the loot for the entire party... but are there any limitations in place? It feels to me very "cheap" to just pool character points into a single delver with wealthy and then the entire party will have a huge profit for this, especially if the wealthy PC is a team player.

Originally Posted by Harald387

I think really that if the same wealthy elven bard sells $10k of loot for $10k instead of $4k and says "okay, you five split this $8k and I'm keeping $2k for my own personal use" that's still okay: everyone's coming out ahead, the bard just comes out more ahead. "Having more money to buy better stuff" is the superpower he paid for instead of, say, Weapon Master or three more levels of Magery or whatever.

I don't disagree that that's still okay. I was just making a separate point in response to the bolded text above, that there is a minor downside (bottlenecking) if only one player has Wealth.

Other cases when that downside manifests include (1) when the player misses one or more game sessions or adventures you'll get less money; (2) if the character dies during the adventure you'll get less money.

P.S. I guess the other point I kind of had in mind is that having $4000 to spend on the party's behalf is a really cool and fun "superpower". DFRPG has a great gear-and-equipment minigame! $160 for a universal scroll of Major Healing, $400 for a universal scroll of Bless, $300 for a charged scroll of Shield III or Haste III, $100 for an (uncharged) scroll of Great Haste... a wealthy elven bard who spends $4000 on consumables is going to have a lot of fun during the next adventure.

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by mirtexxan

Thank you very much for the clarifications! :)

Be wary, those are just like sjmd45's opinions, they're not necessarily wrong, but there are other ways to do things...

Originally Posted by mirtexxan

It seems that the rules highly suggest that the wealthiest delver sells the loot for the entire party...

That's certainly one way to do it, but I've seen really cutthroat parties that got very irate the Wealthy guy wanted a higher share after the sale. And they basically browbeat him into splitting it equally, after the next session he suggested they split the loot equally and then everyone go sell it individually as he now refused to sell for the whole party...

Woof. That also didn't go over very well either, but it did convince the less greedy Players that he was right the first time, and the party (Players as well) basically split into two distinct groups... and the two greedy guses who refused to back down from their positions were kicked out (too many instances of being "those guys").

...but are there any limitations in place?

No. Not by RAW. But by the Social Contract the group of Players have among themselves, possibly.

Personally when I've been the party bursar I've never held back a larger share for myself, but then my "super power" was in selling/buying and wasn't nearly as useful in combat or 'dungeoneering', so I considered the fact the other party members were actively keeping my paper man alive and rolling in loot was equitable.

It feels to me very "cheap" to just pool character points into a single delver with wealthy and then the entire party will have a huge profit for this, especially if the wealthy PC is a team player.

If that's what that Player wants to play... keep in mind someone has to play the "nigh useless bungler" in the dungeon in this case...

And regarding another potential "limitation" on the inflaction of wealth...

There is no inflation of wealth in DFRPG. Town has an unlimited capacity to buy, unless you want to limit it and most GMs (from what I've seen and read) tend to. Frex in Peter Del'Orto's megadungeon, the town of Stericksburg has a random Wizard who is occasionally around to buy the weirder magic (or cursed) items the PCs find, things the regular merchants won't touch.

In one game I ran the outpost "town" had a semi-random ceiling on "purchasing power", the outpost merchants had (5d6+10)K$ total each "week" and a strict limit of "half that" for any singular sale item.

Now I was running a "lower wealth" game, for more money just up the dice or turn the "+" into a "x", and you can set limits too.

How much time does the selling takes?

My default assumption based on the "RAW" of "once per week" adventuring would say the better part of a week selling and buying. So if someone wants to spend extra time to up their Merchant skill, it should be in weeks. Now RAW DFRPG doesn't really allow for this, but... so what. Do what you want.

If you want them to unload on a broker who fronts them cash and turns around and resells their goods, do it, make selling take as much time as for the broker to assess the value (say a day, less if they want to take a lower cut).

Does it depends on the loot being sold to different merchants? To the lump amount of loot to be sold in general?

You can do it either way. Base DFRPG assumption is "handwave it", it doesn't matter as long as it doesn't slow the adventurers down on their way to the next dungeon "next week". But if you want to have a little more fun in town, fun it up.

Just be wary, town is handwaved for genre reasons, so if you start messing with that, you're undermining those conventions and will have spill-over effects.

So, how do you manage selling loot in your game?

If you run games like I do, you don't handwave town at all. I gave out more points to my starting characters so they could afford more Social Skills and I ran town like a living, detailed element of the world, maybe not as dangerous as the wilds, but just as treacherous in it's own right.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Be wary, those are just like sjmd45's opinions, they're not necessarily wrong, but there are other ways to do things...

I 100% endorse this statement. Agree with me only if I've convinced you.

Originally Posted by mburr0003

If that's what that Player wants to play... keep in mind someone has to play the "nigh useless bungler" in the dungeon in this case...

I will again recommend Wealthy Elven Bards as fantastic all-rounders, not useless bunglers. They're pretty good at stealth, pretty good at fighting, pretty good at magic, excellent at the gear and equipment minigame.

Wealthy [20] for buying and selling
Elven [20] for Magery 0 and other goodies
Bardic Talent +1 (3) [10] to boost all your Hard spells up to 15+
Song of Humiliation [4] for an awesome, inexpensive free action
6 points left over for ER 2 or Move +1 (8) or whatever suits you

For spells, be sure to pick up Resist Sound-15 to maintain on the whole party while dungeon crawling so that you and the wizard can spam Concussion without repercussions, Mind Search-14 as a nice complement to your face skills, Concussion (requires 4 quirk points for prereqs) to pre-cast before combat to shift the odds decisively in your favor against most monsters, and maybe Charm and Loyalty for when you're not busy maintaining Resist Sound, to give you strategic and tactical options, and Hush because it's cheap and useful for recon and easy to drop if you need to speak or spellcast. Later on you can pick up stuff like Invisibility, Dark Vision, Complex Illusion, and Illusion Disguise too, although you'll want to raise IQ if you want to keep them up habitually.

"Nigh useless bungler" you will not be.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

If the wealthy elven bard sells $10K of loot for $10K instead of $4K and says, "okay, let's split $6K of this evenly between everyone, but I want to keep $4K to buy healing potions and spell scrolls to help the party," they're not doing anything wrong[1]

Yes, that. If one PC is doing all the selling, they are holding all the money. What they do with it after that is their business. If they want to negotiate a deal with the rest of the party where they sell the stuff at a higher price and keep a fraction of the difference, that's how brokerage works in reality, and should probably be encouraged.

In fact passing a note telling them how much the loot sold for, rather than revealing it to the party as a whole, is a perfectly reasonable way to handle this as the GM. If they then want to lie, you should let them.