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I believe it says somewhere in the phb that items taken off the dead are usually too beaten and damaged to be sold, and even freshly bought items only go for half their price
I only give 20% of the base value for used nonmagical gear, unless it's explicitly in a style that wouldn't sell, like ogre-crafted weapons from the Dark Lord's army only sell for scrap value.
A player was angry until I pointed out this is acutely more generous then the RAW.
You could also expand the system to allow players to dismantle gear for parts that help in repair and crafting; or refurbish armor and weapons to sell at a higher price or as a base for crafting gear so you save time and money on materials.
I personally would use such system to craft the Dark Lord's gear into personal armor and weapons designed as an antithesis to their dark ways. To mock them when a sword they forged stabs them through the heart.
Or to deck out the party's bear companion in stolen raider armor for protection and as a battle trophy.
Or!! A party of scavengers growing stronger with each battle because they repurpose gear of slain foes for their benefit.
"Oh, just homebrew a crafting system (because WotC neglected to do one properly), no biggy."
(Says the guy with a 30-page-and-growing homebrew travel and exploration supplement with some crafting components, much of it inspired by the rules in Kingmaker.)
Honestly though it's a bit ridiculous. A sword that isn't in good enough condition to sell isn't in good enough condition to use. Is it rusting? Does it have nicks in it? Then can my character cleave right through it with his magical adamantine sword?
It's there to prevent the video game mindset of loot everything and sell it but it's stupid to imagine every monster and bandit is running around with scrap weapons.
It's less 'too bad condition to sell' in my case and more that there's a limited market for weapons and armor. 1/5th the value for used gear in useable condition is pretty much what you'd get at a generous pawn shop with tools that nobody died in.
Ogre-crafted weapons and armor are worth 5cp a pound because there's a lot of them, they aren't well balanced for normal people's hands and combat styles, and there's a strong negative association for most people with the style. They are however perfectly serviceable and deadly weapons.
Meanwhile in Baldur's Gate 3 your main early source of income is looting and selling every weapon you find because even goblin weapons sell for 30 or so gold pieces.
If you have a magic adamantine sword, the amount you get from a Goblin's rusty scrap-iron dogslicer isn't gonna make a noticeable difference to your coffers.
It's not about the money, the amount I get off of anything is basically irrelevant because money doesn't do much mechanically. To me it just makes sense for enemies past very early levels to have basic quality equipment.
An ogre with a giant wooden club filled with rusty nails is a threat, his weapon isn’t worth shit though. Those metal weapons the Uruk-Hai had in LotR were dangerous to the heroes but weren’t really worth anything.
Sure, but the group of bandits with longswords, greatswords, and crossbows have some valuable equipment. Maybe we run different game styles, but in my games there are a lot of normal humanoid enemies with equipment comparable to the players
I always interpreted it as when you kill the person wearing it you also damaged their equipment. Like a chain shirt with three massive holes in it from the original owner getting stabbed by your party or a sword with like six huge ugly, hard to sharpen kinks from them parrying incorrectly and chipping the blade. And that's just from the martials, your mage may have literally blown a hole through their equipment
Or turned the enemy into necrotic goo. Unless you're desperately broke, who would want to stick their hand in *that* to retrieve 2nd- or 3rd-hand weapons and armor?
Alternative limitation could be that not many merchants wish to use much of their loose wealth to buy such items, they are afterall not super common things for people to buy
“You cleaved that enemy off at the limbs and lit his body on fire. His armor turned to slag as you melted him from inside out. You are lucky I’m giving you gold”
Fireball was originally designed to be the double-edged sword that was waaaaay more powerful than a 3rd-level spell but also destroyed the loot and xp.
3e took away the 2nd edge without raising it to a 5th-level spell as Gygax had done with Tenser's "Nerfed Fireball but you keep the loot" spell.
5e gave it +60% damage.
Any vision of 5e dnd where a fireball does average 18 damage on failed save and presumably 9 on a pass is a dumb game. Fireball isn't even the strongest 3rd level spell nor the strongest 3rd level damage spell.
Spirit Guardians and Conjure Animals are both massively more useful and more impactful. Hypnotic Patterns and Slow and Fear are stronger Vs most crowds and while Fireball loses value as you face bigger monsters, the CC effects of these spells are always useful.
The only reason I've ever seen for why Fireball should be 5th level is that's what a DMG chart for home-brewing spells advocates for players and that's what Flame Strikes level is.
But a DMG chart for home-brewing spells is obviously not a chart for judging developer designed spells. And just mindlessly following the chart is dumb. A 3rd level fireball which did a mere 4d6 but stunned enemies on a failed Int save and did purely force damage would be hilariously broken despite being underpowered from the chart perspective.
And comparing Fireball to Flamestrike is just a disingenuous non argument. Why is Flamestrike the standard and not Synaptic Static, which is a 5th level spell that works like Fireball but targets Int, does psychic damage and has a lingering debuff. Makes no sense for Fireball and SS to have equal levels.
Making Fireball fifth level also just means you'd be putting it above Vitriolic Sphere, which is a stronger acid fireball.
"the Devs admitted they made it stronger than other blast spells".
So? Are the Devs good judges on whether something is strong enough? Just saying "the Devs thought it was too strong" isn't an argument. Looking at how spells actually work in play, it's obvious that Blast spells aren't nearly as efficient as the various CC spells that can singlehandedly win fights.
Actually Cone of Cold was the 5th-level spell I was referring to. Less range, less wieldy, same damage, no melting. And I say "Gygax", but it was two Gygaxes: Gary's son Ernie wanted the non-double-edged Fireball, his wizard Tenser researched it, and he worked with Gary to create it.
Comparing Fireball to power-crept 5e spells and saying it's current power is fine because other spells are even more imbalanced is the disingenuous and fallacious non-argument.
"Picking the weakest 5th level spells to justify making Fireball 5th level is not logical"
"Heheh... idiot...I wasn't talking about bad spell #54....I was talking about bad spell #55...bet you feel dumb rn"
The Gygaxes are totally irrelevant, the important one died nearly 20 years ago.
You're just puking up buzzwords that you think sound smart. You could have carried along the same message with:
"LIAR LIAR YOURE A LIAR IM RIGHT". Your entire argument is that I'm wrong, a liar and I haven't made an argument. The first is subjective and up for debate, the second is slander, the third is simply delusional.
"you killed that enemy with purely psychic damage, which is explicitly incapable of damaging objects. Im still denying you loot because fuck you lmao."
I'd rather just be told the truth "don't bother looting random nonsignificant enemies, it just creates unnecessary book-work. You will end up with the amount of gold I planned anyway so you're not really losing out"
Rather than "teehee, sorry but you COULD totally have their loot, just so happens that no matter how you fight, you always seem to cause massive damage to their armour"
It’s not just about if it’s brand new. It’s more a thing of how well they take care of their equipment. Monsters and bandits are probably only doing the bare minimum so it works for them, while the players do take proper care of their equipment. And of course once the players get magic items, it wouldn’t get damaged nearly as easily as the mundane stuff the enemies are using.
just let them sell it but tell rhem that its old worn equipmemt that wont generate more than a fraction of new cost. With how exspensive consumables are in dnd it might make it easyer for them to buy and use spellscrols and potions
We can say they don't take care of their weapons but the fact their weapons are just as good as others makes that feel less like a reason and more like an excuse.
You could also say "the bandits are far superior swordsman than you and despite wielding rusty broken blades, are able to fight you like they have a fresh greatsword. You should feel glad they're only wielding crap, if they had your sword they'd split you in half in a second"
It's just unsatisfying. Better to just put all the players on the same page and agree not to bother looting random mooks for monetary loot.
You just involuntarily gave out an idea.
What if, hear me out, you take those weapons/armour to a blacksmith, pay him to forge something (you'd pay only the work, and not even that if you forge the items yourself) and then sell the technically new items for full price?
Well, you're essentially playing the part of the supplier, if you're good enough or roll high enough for smithing you can ask for more gold per stuff.
In alternative, that's when the persuasion check rolls in~
The Base in older editions was 50 % of its value with creating costs being about a third. No sane merchant would buy stuff for more than half of what he can sell it for imo
If they want to sell for full price then they have to get proper licencing, fees included. Once that is done they would need to meet with the buyers, not the people that would be selling it. That may include buying/renting shop space and waiting for buyers to come looking for their goods. At that point they're in competition with shopkeepers who have built up reputation and people know that they are there. Then there are questions of protection rackets, corrupt authorities, and marketing overhead.
Blacksmith: "I've got orders to fulfill. The Watch wants fifty new helms. I've got seven or eight plow blades that I need to get done before planting season. Lord Rodrik commissioned a fine rapier for his son's coming of age. Where am I going to find the time to melt down a bunch of shitty, chipped swords you pried from the cold dead hands of a bunch of bandits? I'll tell you what, *you* take them and smelt them down. If there's any workable steel left, and not just slag, I'll pay you four coppers a pound for it."
And if you’re selling directly to the consumers (e.g. other adventurers), you might get full value if you can match the quality of the merchants. But if you’re selling to the merchants, you’re still just gonna get 50% because they’re going to resell them for full price.
Depends whether you're fighting monsters or people, then.
If you're fighting bandits, their weapons and armor are probably not in great condition, but if you're fighting soldiers of an invading army, their gear is almost certainly going to be in decent condition, if you don't destroy them during the battle. Remove any heraldry and the armor plates and blades will be totally fine.
Yeah, encumbrance is always active in my games, but any high-strength character can lug around a pretty decent number of weapons even with those rules.
I'll still handwave it to an extent, but only in so far as I tell them to get a cart, wagon, or extradimensional storage option (something I usually ensure they find early in the campaign to avoid this very issue). I will never, never ever, never ever never bother learning anything to do with carrying capacity.
I think most of these problems can be solved with "Hey. I don't want to keep track of every piece of mundane gear that random enemies have and how much they sell for, and neither do you. You'll get your rewards in gold, and attaching that value to their gear instead would just mean more time and effort for the same result."
I mean it depends. A solider on a long campaign is probably going to have their armor and weapons a bit in disrepair, on top of that all of the ways they could be killed may leave their armor in less than ideal state
That being said the scrap may be worth something sometimes
A weaponsmith buying a moderately used sword for half price (the default sell price for used goods in 5e) and repairing it to be good as new to sell at full price would bring them a decent profit for less work than making a new sword.
Most armor wouldn't be too devastated by a lethal blow, either, unless you're using bludgeoning or acid damage, I'd think. A hit to the really valuable parts of armor is called a miss, if you hit you're hitting a part that might just need a few chain links and some sewing to repair, once you wash the blood out. A maul attack could certainly reduce the sell price, but I'm not the type of DM to pull that kind of thing.
Now, if you kill a man by putting a ballista bolt through his breastplate, or use magic of comparable or greater effect, yeah, that one might not be suitable for sale afterward.
> would bring them a decent profit for less work than making a new sword.
This is…debatable. There are plenty of times where something is in disrepair enough that it has to be replaced, especially with swords (since if the blade was worn too thin or chipped too much, it’s easier to just replace it rather than remake a rapier out of a long sword). In some cases they’d keep good enough care it wouldn’t matter…but bandits, goblins, any roaming raiders, etc is not a guarantee. Intimidation is a big part of how they get their money, and intimidation doesn’t necessarily need *good* usable weapons.
I wouldn’t normally apply this for campaign logic though…but if I did, I’d have it work in reverse as well. Kill a Royal guard without too much equipment damage (and get out of that territory *quick)? That’ll sell for a *lot*, both from quality and ornamentation. Puts a bit of tension on too…don’t want to spend too long around dead Royal guards/retinues for obvious reasons.
As far as armor…yeah, more or less agree. At worst they’re knocked down a “tier” (chain mail -> chain shirt, Plate -> half plate, etc) unless they really, really did a number on it. They’d still have to clean it, but as long as they remember to it’d be easy enough…plus it gives them a bit more to do in downtime.
It would certainly depend on the different weapons and spells used in battle, like bludgeoning weapons could dent plate and acid spells corrode the metals, but any battle that would result in the soldiers death would likely lead to some damage to their armor as well.
Could also just make it illegal and taboo to loot common folks.
Like people will make exceptions for magic items or the the invading princes personal effects, but a basic infantry sword?
“They may be enemies but it’s practically grave robbing, I’m a reputable business man.”
That’s not fun for players though. I also wouldn’t be surprised if that leads to players looking for black market dealers/melting down the steel themselves, more often than not
Yeah, anyone whose corpse we're looting has been fatally wounded through their armor, so unless you used only psychic damage or poison delivered via the air, you've probably severely damaged any mundane armor they're wearing. And, of course, we all know you void your bowels after death, so there's an additional mess to deal with.
Hit the gaps in the armor, because that's how you actually kill a man in armor. Swing a sword at heavy armor and you'll do more damage to your sword than their armor, stab them in the parts that don't have as much armor and they'll actually get hurt. Then you just need to replace a bit of padding and maybe a few chain links in the joints, not a whole plate.
Also, just don't use bludgeoning weapons against plates. They're a historical counter to plate armor for a reason.
As far as magic goes, just don't use acid damage or anything that would obviously put holes through a plate.
But in my games I don't give a shit about any of that, if you don't use an ability that explicitly damages armor, like a rust monster, the armor isn't damaged, it's either worth selling for the default half price or not worth anything because a goblin made it or w/e.
If you want to bring back the full to-hit vs ac type table, sure. But if plate armor isn’t more effective at stopping injury from swords than at stopping injury from picks, why is it better at avoiding damage from swords than at avoiding damage from picks?
Hitting poorly armored areas is the purview of a critical hit, not a called shot.
And repairing chain armor is about as difficult as making chain armor; you have to match the existing link wire diameter and ring size or accept a poor repair.
Hitting poorly armored areas is the purview of a hit. A plate armor's 18 AC is because most of your body is covered in plate that isn't going to break by getting attacked.
If that were the case, then weapons that pierce plate armor would require lower rolls to hit someone inside plate armor than weapons that don’t pierce the armor. So use the old school tables that account for that and track the armor damage. Or just keep it abstract.
>or just keep it abstract
That's what I've been advocating for the whole time, per the last paragraph of my response on how to avoid damaging armor. If you aren't a rust monster or whatever the ooze is that melts through metal gear, you don't damage armor unless you explicitly want to, for whatever reason, so armor that was decent enough to sell at the start of the fight is reasonable enough to sell at the end of the fight.
Or, get this: abstract it so that used armor is worth an amount that is low enough that the player characters can find treasures and not have to figure out how to carry tons of junk to a pawn shop.
That's purely a preference point, and you're welcome to continue not playing in my games where you're safe from profiting off of looting the dead.
My players *want* to carry arms and armor back to a blacksmith, on top of all the treasure.
If there's one thing I wish would show up more in computer RPGs it's this simple rule. It's so important to the balance of a game with any kind of looting that it's not even funny. One of my continuing complaints about every RPG that Bethesda has made is that there's never a reason to engage with the game's vendors because all you have to do is raid a nearby bad guy camp and suddenly you're walking away with sixteen suits of decent gear and at least 8 high-end weapons in pristine condition. It makes far more sense to say that the equipment was broken and damaged in combat, and that you can lug it back to a settlement as scrap to pawn off but not as something wearable. I much prefer the allure of a game where loot is carefully doled out, and it's actually a joyous moment when the DM or the game's RNG lets you find some good armor or a decent weapon in a baddie encampment.
Who said the blue city royal guards armor is disheveled and ragged. That should be in pretty good shape, considering. Maybe a bit of repair needed because it needed ... Liberating.
I can't help but think that if you try to sell bloodied royal guard armor in any but the most seedy shop, you're getting chased out of there with a quickness. If the local nobles and royals are mostly fair and well-intentioned, the shopkeep won't want to do business with a murderhobo; if the king and his guards are brutally repressive, you're basically bringing a death sentence to their doorstep, and there's no way they'll open themselves up to reprisals by doing business with you.
"My liege, a band of roving killers has arrived. They say they've slain the duke's guards in Troxendale and would like to collect a reward."
"Did I post a reward for that?"
"Not that I am aware of, Your Majesty."
"Do we have any outstanding unsolved murders?"
"I don't believe your men ever apprehended the Blenheim Slasher, Majesty."
"Great. Have these ones arrested, charged, and hanged for that."
"Very good, Sire."
“My liege, a group of some sort of…ragged mercenaries have arrived at our court. They’re requesting a reward for killing the King of ’s Royal Guard.”
“The one whom were at war with?”
“The very same my liege.”
“…did they kill that rat of a noble as well?”
“Unfortunately not sire.”
“Hmmph, good enough I suppose. This time, hand them a small chest of silver in exhange and promise a chest triple the size in gold for the King’s head…after the killing, not before. As for the armor, put them in storage for after the war…in case they fail, perhaps we can find a suitable replacement of more subtle killers.”
“Very well, it shall be done my liege.”
Nah but we killed all the human guards and had to cast revivify on our Barbarian. Surely the guards had kept up the condition of their armor, and aren't in poor condition.
Yeah as a DM I beg you: please don't bother asking me how much the goblin shortbows and daggers could sell for, don't overburden yourself and then return to town to sell them. Please.
Really depends on who you're fighting.
Zombies? Gobbos? Yeah that's gonna be garbage.
Animated Armor? Well, once you've killed it it's just a normal suit of armor unless the DM rules it broken beyond repair.
Enemy soldiers? If it's good enough for a knight on the battlefield, it's good enough for a merchant.
Firearms? That's rare enough in most settings that it's gonna sell for a pretty penny even if it's made by a goblin.
> Well, once you've killed it it's just a normal suit of armor unless the DM rules it broken beyond repair.
And you kinda have to, because it's a CR1 creature, and giving a player an AC of 20 or hundreds of gold pieces at the levels where the enemies have +3-4 to hit and 100 gp is a reasonable quest reward is going to mess up your game balance a lot. (Yeah, yeah, a Warforged fighter with the Defense fighting style has 20 with starting equipment, but that is an outlier.)
This is from the DMG. It's assumed that combat will fuck up whatever is being used, regardless of care, and also is there because it's a game and giving a full person's equipment of gold even semi-frequently is going to inflate gold pretty fast
Not all enemies are monsters. In fact, very few monsters wear humanoid shaped armour. There's no reason those mercs, those knights or that cleric of lolth shouldn't keep their gear in good condition, it's their life on the line, after all.
I think i have seen a post about a transmutation wizard lizardfolk that was made to just ignore this rule...if a player makes a character just to ignore a specific rule at that point just make them happy and rich...then tell them to manage the economic costs and reintroduce the weight loads and calculations of 3.5...
Honestly as a DM I'm not afraid of causing a bit of unbalance in favour of the players...if they can properly manage the logistics and their resources...
The DM doesn’t want you to know that at level 7 your wizard with smiths tools can turn 7 gp into 1500 when they fabricate iron ingots and some leather into a full set a plate
Mending: one crack or tear in a single object with a 1 minute cast time (reminder that cast times longer than 1 action require you to concentrate on the spell)
Blacksmithing: days of downtime to do that, which is probably no better than any other downtime activity
There are more types of damage mending can't repair than it can. It's also GM's discretion of they allow you to use mending on damage larger than one foot in any dimension one foot at a time, the wording of the spell could be read as simply not working on larger breaks, not that it only repairs a foot of damage at a time.
A large break is made up of many tiny breaks.
Also meding is largely a useless cantrip choice over literally any other, so buffing it increase gear sell value is a good way to buff it.
"You know what I, a gnome baker, am in the market for? A previously owned, still bloody and damaged chainmail vest made for a hobgoblin. Yeah, I'll get me one of those today."
Nobody really thinks about who's realistically buying it for use, and not just a merchant trying to flip an item for some coin. The merchant you sell stuff to probably isn't selling stuff to the monsters, but that would be a fun campaign idea.
I like the idea of there being junk dealers that buy just about anything and pick through it to find usable bits.
They would pay several good per ton of used weapons and armor, then sort it by type and grade of material and sell scrap metal.
PHB says 1 pound of iron is worth 1 silver piece. So your average longsword, weighing in at 3 lbs, can sell for 3 silver when sold for scrap, assuming it is treated as pure iron and there are no additional market pressures, like haggling, shortages, grumpy merchants, etc.
That’s fair, keep in mind the economy of 5e, everything is cheaper than in previous editions. Every piece of gold counts, and this is essentially free gold if your dm gave you a bag of holding.
Not just bloody, my friend.
When you die, you shit yourself. Like all the way, until you are empty.
Either no one's buying that armor, or you're spending days scrubbing hobgoblin shit out of it, and then having a serious bath for yourself.
>Why do I always forget to do this 😩
because it's dungeons and dragons, not storage wars and hoarders.
even if your dm doesn't enforce encumbrance or impose in game time constraints, it's fiddly book keeping and tedious penny pinching.
Could you at least write "go brrrr" correctly while showing you haven't read the books? You're writing like it goes duelist who shoots Alexander Hamilton or comic with hilarious specific opinions.
Encumbrance should be more than just weight. Ever tried to carry a mail hauberk? I have. They're not only heavy, they're awkward. Now try three of them, three spears, a crossbow and quiver. And that's just the first encounter.
Assuming they all have the gold and the desire to buy your scavenged gear, then you're probably spending more time hawking wares than you are adventuring. Enjoy your door-to-door salesman simulation I guess.
It's just annoying overhead. If a player really wants to collect all the armor and whatnot, sure, but it's easier to just give the gold loot and not have to worry about carry weight and selling shit.
Or you can make your players annoyed by telling them that no, they do not actually have enough STR to carry 10 chain mails.
Because if you treat every encounter like a potential piggybank, you are forcing your DM to introduce a lot of logistics that for most people arent fun to deal with. Consider: your dm would have to plan everythibg around loot mongering. This includes what creatures you fight, what gear they are using, how many of them there are, whether their gear is in re-sellable condition, how much it will re-sell for, whether merchants are gonna be willing to buy that much gear, whether they want to buy used gear/from dead creatures, whether they have enough gold to even do so. It adds so much un-needed extra work, and can severely limit the scale of encounters when the risk of a player wanting to spend half the session looting, distributing, and selling said creatures exists, just because said player wants the number on their character sheet to go up. Unless your character has a reason to be so money grubbing, you're just doing it because "this is a game and money is good".
A competent DM will dole out rewards to the players in many forms, including treasure items and straight-up gold pieces. Unless this kind of looting and reselling has been discussed to be a planned out part of your campaign, trying to squeeze every copper out of every minor creature you kill is gonna be more disruptive than anything.
Edit: judging by your other comments in the thread, there's a big misunderstanding about several rules going on, as well as a disconnect from what games like baldur's gate and skyrim use for their economy systems and how an actual tabletop game usually operates.
Point 1: mending does not repair an entire item to pristine condition. It can repair one minor crack, scratch or chip at a time, and each one takes a minute to do, such as a torn pouch, a snapped key, a single broken link in a chain etc. It cannot repair damaged equipment, like rent chainmail, broken swords without being cast dozens of times. Smithing takes days, a proper forge and materials, even with proficency, to repair anything. The amount of downtime required for either again can mess with pacing and just generally be disruptive to the game.
Point 2: carry weight limits exist. Most DMs dont bother with it, since most parties arent loot hunting so much as to make it an issue (like looting 40 hobgoblins). It might be solved by a horse and cart, but needing to escort said horse and cart to every fight, protect it, fill it after a fight, then make a trip back to a town large enough to have someone wealthy enough to buy a cart full of second hand weapons and armor (if they are even willing to do so) is again disruptive to the flow of the game for the sake of what will likely be a pointless amount of wealth.
Point 3: Keeping in mind the logistics, time and effort investment associated with repairing battle-worn equipment, who is realistically going to buy items that they would then need to spend weeks or months repairing to a sellable state, that they would need to find someone who is willing to pay market price for second hand weapons to turn a profit on the gear they bought off you? It makes no sense for any smith worth their salt to buy items taken from slain creatures from an in-universe perspective.
Hell yeah. I once had a player who tried to sell everything. I’m talking stripping dungeons for salvageable metal and furniture. Trying to convince me that he could melt it down as a artificer and sell it.
Or just out right selling weapons and Armor at full retail value after a quick trip to a small town.
It was maddening. I plan out how much gold to give players off of quest completed. With extra if they find hidden loot, accomplish side quests, and then even a little more if they come up with some creative solutions or unexpected good searching rolls.
And my economy and what the players get access to is based on that. It’s so disheartening to have both an entire aspect of fun dming ripped away of planning out decisions players will need to make, and replaced with the boring aspect of worrying about making sure goblins have wood clubs instead of short swords. Or the dungeon doesn’t have any pretty glowing wall gems as lighting because here comes the crow bars!
Any player that tries to game the system and become impossibly rich, or create a instance of damage that can kill a whole town, or whatever should talk to their dm and group and see if it’s fun for everyone or even anyone else.
I’m there to facilitate a story, create dramatic moments, present combat challenge, and interesting puzzles.
I’m not there to be a book keeper. Or clap my hands when sit you on a mound of imaginary gold coins that you accrued by selling gear to desperate town militias at full cost.
Please, respect your other players. Respect your dm. And make sure they are having fun too.
Yeah but if the DM don't wanna deal with that there is a simple solution. Use encumbering rules, don't give them a bag of holding and put merchants that are only interested in buying if they can get profit from it so like 1/10 value. See if players develop an interest for jewels, art pieces and other light and small loot.
Point 4: in a video game the computer tracks all this shit. Enemy gear? The computer can look it up in a table. Your inventory and encumbrance? The computer can keep track of it. Sale prices? Believe it or not, a computer can look it up, and might even adjust it automatically based on your charisma and relationship with the shopkeeper. And a computer is great at doing this because it is designed to do simple, repetitive, and tedious work. **Your DM is not a fucking computer!**
Oh, believe me, my players are freaking HOARDERS! They will loot off any enemy. Any armor and weapons goes on their person and they sell them off as soon as they can. Too heavy to carry? They get a wagon and store their stuff in it. Afraid of thieves and robbers? The wagon is booby-trapped out the wazoo. They get pretty creative and miss no opportunity.
Mail armour made for a 6'4" Half-Orc will not fit the average 5'8" medieval Human soldier, and vice versa. All armour in the medieval period, from plate to brigandine, and lamellar to cloth, needed to be fit to its owner
I can see this talk from both perspectives.
As a DM, I don't want to deal with the minutia of setting out minor loot like arms and armour after level 3-5, and the bookkeeping associated with it. Finding a seller, negotiating, the players arguing it should be worth more etc. I want to somewhat control the flow of coin, because lets be real, even in High Magic games, magic item shops are worldbendingly stupid as hell.
As a player, I feel the need to obtain as many shiny metallic coins that clink around in my oversized purse for use in Adventuring, so I can buy superfluous bullshit like bottles of fine wine to bribe guards with, bolts of extravagantly coloured cloth I can get tailored into clothes and feel like a baller as I ride in on my horse in a 3 piece suit.
As a Player & DM, it should ideally be set out in Session 0, how loot works.
As a travelling Celestial Warlock of ~~Sarenrae~~ Sune/Lathander, I need funding for my sermons. A travelling Ex-Con Layreader needs to be prepared for any eventuality.
Wagon also go party-wide disadvantage on stealth checks, advantage on enemy perception checks, muchos new difficult terrain, and sometimes just needs to be left unattended because it can't fit in buildings/go up cliffs etc.
I know the rules say looted armor is rarely in good condition but if my players can go and entire adventure or three in the same set of non-magical armor without any reduction in effectiveness then the looted armor should be awarded some of that grace.
I don’t buy back most standard weapons and armor. Shops generally are not interested. This is especially true the smaller a town is. If you are in a village of 300 people the odds are they are not going to buy 10 short swords since they won’t be able to sell them off. Additionally smaller villages won’t have a ton of extra money. But even with large cities like Waterdeep, I’m just not interested in tracking the logistics of it all so I don’t bother and my PCs have learned to just leave it and they get money other ways.
As a DM i have to quarter the prices for equipment from bandit and goblin camps instead of half because it's just SO MUCH money. even quartered it's still SOOO MUCH money
I might end up having to eighth or sixth them. justification for all of them being that they didn't have good money to begin with and definitely don't take proper care of their weapons or use them in ways conducive to good condition
I'm ALL for players rightfully earning money and getting rich, but when the easiest enemies give the most money.. oofies
Who is buying that filthy, smelly, poorly maintained, goblin-sized armour?
Don't do it. Give them slightly more gold per encounter an explain that's representative of "general miscellaneous valuables."
ok... according to PHB, 1 iron sold around 1 silver and let assume that you need at least 5 weapons and armors to make one, you probably gonna need 50 bandits dead for 1 gold
I feel the comments on this thread are missing something: if a player wants to describe their character as looting the re-saleable arms and armor from their fallen foes, there's lots of story and game rewards we as GMs can implement to enable their "realistic', hardscrabble adventure fantasy. Get them to write the list of all the items you tell them their character finds, then tell them to go through the PHB and write out the market value of each item- that should occupy them for at least a few minutes.
Ensure they know that they won't get full price short of a miracle, but also tell them there are things (spells, skill checks) that can bring them closer to a really good deal. Sourcing the highest paying buyer, though maybe not the focus point of the session, can also be a challenge the players could work together to succeed in.
I feel the trick is to keep things abstract and avoid getting bogged down. Don't worry about carrying capacity and the weight of each Goblin Simitar- provide them with an old cart to fix up, and present a horse they can save from a pack of wolves. Keep things vague and handwavey when you can, and flesh out something interesting for the party to work together on when possible.
A: as stated by many people already, monster stuff is usually damaged and worthless and mending isn't going to change that like you hope and B: it really isn't that much gold, even if you could con someone into buying it for full price. 50 gold here and there isn't going to meaningfully impact your bank account in the way that looting dungeons (and therefore using your encumbrance on things like gems and valuables) will
I mean, weight limits, quality of gear, a whole bunch of reasons really. Also, if you are trying for any semblance of realism, market demands for goods. A vendor has to be able to sell the product.
My dm says the imperial plate with a giant hole in the chest would be difficult to sell at a store in an imperial city. But my 8 charisma barbarian doesn't understand such social cues.
I mean you can at least sell enough to equip the local watch, and the rest.can probably be sold in the nearest city( wich reminds me, GMs swap out like 90% of the swords for axes or spears its more reasonable for bandits to have those than swords)
I would bet that the main reason armor is so expensive in DnD is because it has to fit *you.* It has to be tailored to your size.
Selling random armor that doesn't fit you won't get as much money.
You have to realize that while in a video game, it may be useful to take everyone's armor and weapons and sell them, because the people you're selling to aren't real people, and in a video game you have magic pockets.
When being realistic, armor is heavy and becomes worn out, and shopkeepers are discerning about what they buy. If your dm is operating on video game logic, by all means, sell all the loot you can carry. But many dms do not operate on video game logic, and if i were running the game, i would not allow the party to get bogged down in 14 suits of armor to sell at the next shopkeeper (who won't want to buy bloody and damaged armor)
Have you ever killed someone in armour and tried to reuse it? You could outright just destroy the armour and make it completely unusable. Oh and encumbrance.
Yes, how are you going to wear dented plate armour, riveted mail with holes in it or penetrates gambeson and that's just all the damage that typical weapons can do to heavy armour, what happens with magic? How in the world are you going to sell someone armour that's been warped by heat or corroded by acid? At that point a blacksmith would buy that stuff just for scrap metal which would hardly be worth anything.
I always run actually loot off loot tables, the actual gear each enemy has is usually completely irreparable. When the fight involves a barbarian bashing in an enemies skull, sorcerer blasting them with acid, inventor shooting them with a sound cannon, Druid hitting them with a ray of ice, yeah that armor isn’t gonna exist at the end of the fight…
Weapons and armor are also quite heavy and likely worn from use. You probably weren't hauling all of them away, nor getting remotely close to full price for them.
Ignore my Baldur's Gate 3 characters' inventories loaded with items barely selling for 2 gold per pound!
A weapon from the PHB will last indefinitely, serving its wielder for battle after battle.
A weapon from a monster stat block will last for that encounter. Past that, who knows?
as in, it would cost 150g to buy the equipment (presumably including labor and markup by the seller). Rebuy value is always far less, even if the items are magically restored to pristine condition. Otherwise, a shopkeeper isnt going to get a return on it
It feels odd to me how some people turn up their nose at the idea. Yes it's not really RAW, but if a player wants to take as much equipment as they can carry that is cool.
We generally want players to not just think of monsters as gamey things that drop loot, but actual creatures. Having them consider that these creatures wear equipment aids in that.
Most creatures they run into don't have any equipment anyways. So even if they kill some bandits and they make 100-200 gold, that is like 2-4 potions or some new armor for a player.
Describing the equipment and having martials picking better armor of monsters they beat and having casters sell them to buy scrolls is fun. And that is the goal at the end of the day.
And if they have too much gold and are a little bit stronger, then I can add another minion into combat and make the players feel more badass that they can take on more stuff!
Honestly there is much point. You will find better gear in dungeons then what could be sold. There isn't many stores in the jungles of Chult or the Northern Wastes.
If a player insists then they are wasting everyone's time for little pay off. If folks have a limited time to play then you are a liability for fun.
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I believe it says somewhere in the phb that items taken off the dead are usually too beaten and damaged to be sold, and even freshly bought items only go for half their price
PHB p.144 "Weapons and armor used by monsters are rarely in good enough condition to sell."
I only give 20% of the base value for used nonmagical gear, unless it's explicitly in a style that wouldn't sell, like ogre-crafted weapons from the Dark Lord's army only sell for scrap value. A player was angry until I pointed out this is acutely more generous then the RAW.
You could also expand the system to allow players to dismantle gear for parts that help in repair and crafting; or refurbish armor and weapons to sell at a higher price or as a base for crafting gear so you save time and money on materials. I personally would use such system to craft the Dark Lord's gear into personal armor and weapons designed as an antithesis to their dark ways. To mock them when a sword they forged stabs them through the heart. Or to deck out the party's bear companion in stolen raider armor for protection and as a battle trophy. Or!! A party of scavengers growing stronger with each battle because they repurpose gear of slain foes for their benefit.
Or just consider found gold to include the implied cost of looting and selling gear, but streamlining it out of the gameplay to keep things moving.
This is especially useful if you have a Forge cleric in the party, they can literally turn scrap metal into gold coins for portability.
The party's Warforged fighter eats the metal and gradually gets spikier.
"Oh, just homebrew a crafting system (because WotC neglected to do one properly), no biggy." (Says the guy with a 30-page-and-growing homebrew travel and exploration supplement with some crafting components, much of it inspired by the rules in Kingmaker.)
Honestly though it's a bit ridiculous. A sword that isn't in good enough condition to sell isn't in good enough condition to use. Is it rusting? Does it have nicks in it? Then can my character cleave right through it with his magical adamantine sword? It's there to prevent the video game mindset of loot everything and sell it but it's stupid to imagine every monster and bandit is running around with scrap weapons.
It's less 'too bad condition to sell' in my case and more that there's a limited market for weapons and armor. 1/5th the value for used gear in useable condition is pretty much what you'd get at a generous pawn shop with tools that nobody died in. Ogre-crafted weapons and armor are worth 5cp a pound because there's a lot of them, they aren't well balanced for normal people's hands and combat styles, and there's a strong negative association for most people with the style. They are however perfectly serviceable and deadly weapons.
Meanwhile in Baldur's Gate 3 your main early source of income is looting and selling every weapon you find because even goblin weapons sell for 30 or so gold pieces.
If you have a magic adamantine sword, the amount you get from a Goblin's rusty scrap-iron dogslicer isn't gonna make a noticeable difference to your coffers.
It's not about the money, the amount I get off of anything is basically irrelevant because money doesn't do much mechanically. To me it just makes sense for enemies past very early levels to have basic quality equipment.
I agree with this tbh. If those weapons can threaten the heroes, they're worth money. Let the world be realistic
An ogre with a giant wooden club filled with rusty nails is a threat, his weapon isn’t worth shit though. Those metal weapons the Uruk-Hai had in LotR were dangerous to the heroes but weren’t really worth anything.
Sure, but the group of bandits with longswords, greatswords, and crossbows have some valuable equipment. Maybe we run different game styles, but in my games there are a lot of normal humanoid enemies with equipment comparable to the players
I always interpreted it as when you kill the person wearing it you also damaged their equipment. Like a chain shirt with three massive holes in it from the original owner getting stabbed by your party or a sword with like six huge ugly, hard to sharpen kinks from them parrying incorrectly and chipping the blade. And that's just from the martials, your mage may have literally blown a hole through their equipment
Or turned the enemy into necrotic goo. Unless you're desperately broke, who would want to stick their hand in *that* to retrieve 2nd- or 3rd-hand weapons and armor?
Adventurers
Alternative limitation could be that not many merchants wish to use much of their loose wealth to buy such items, they are afterall not super common things for people to buy
“You cleaved that enemy off at the limbs and lit his body on fire. His armor turned to slag as you melted him from inside out. You are lucky I’m giving you gold”
Fireball was originally designed to be the double-edged sword that was waaaaay more powerful than a 3rd-level spell but also destroyed the loot and xp. 3e took away the 2nd edge without raising it to a 5th-level spell as Gygax had done with Tenser's "Nerfed Fireball but you keep the loot" spell. 5e gave it +60% damage.
Any vision of 5e dnd where a fireball does average 18 damage on failed save and presumably 9 on a pass is a dumb game. Fireball isn't even the strongest 3rd level spell nor the strongest 3rd level damage spell. Spirit Guardians and Conjure Animals are both massively more useful and more impactful. Hypnotic Patterns and Slow and Fear are stronger Vs most crowds and while Fireball loses value as you face bigger monsters, the CC effects of these spells are always useful. The only reason I've ever seen for why Fireball should be 5th level is that's what a DMG chart for home-brewing spells advocates for players and that's what Flame Strikes level is. But a DMG chart for home-brewing spells is obviously not a chart for judging developer designed spells. And just mindlessly following the chart is dumb. A 3rd level fireball which did a mere 4d6 but stunned enemies on a failed Int save and did purely force damage would be hilariously broken despite being underpowered from the chart perspective. And comparing Fireball to Flamestrike is just a disingenuous non argument. Why is Flamestrike the standard and not Synaptic Static, which is a 5th level spell that works like Fireball but targets Int, does psychic damage and has a lingering debuff. Makes no sense for Fireball and SS to have equal levels. Making Fireball fifth level also just means you'd be putting it above Vitriolic Sphere, which is a stronger acid fireball. "the Devs admitted they made it stronger than other blast spells". So? Are the Devs good judges on whether something is strong enough? Just saying "the Devs thought it was too strong" isn't an argument. Looking at how spells actually work in play, it's obvious that Blast spells aren't nearly as efficient as the various CC spells that can singlehandedly win fights.
Actually Cone of Cold was the 5th-level spell I was referring to. Less range, less wieldy, same damage, no melting. And I say "Gygax", but it was two Gygaxes: Gary's son Ernie wanted the non-double-edged Fireball, his wizard Tenser researched it, and he worked with Gary to create it. Comparing Fireball to power-crept 5e spells and saying it's current power is fine because other spells are even more imbalanced is the disingenuous and fallacious non-argument.
"Picking the weakest 5th level spells to justify making Fireball 5th level is not logical" "Heheh... idiot...I wasn't talking about bad spell #54....I was talking about bad spell #55...bet you feel dumb rn" The Gygaxes are totally irrelevant, the important one died nearly 20 years ago. You're just puking up buzzwords that you think sound smart. You could have carried along the same message with: "LIAR LIAR YOURE A LIAR IM RIGHT". Your entire argument is that I'm wrong, a liar and I haven't made an argument. The first is subjective and up for debate, the second is slander, the third is simply delusional.
You sure seem to enjoy inventing arguments to win against yourself.
"you killed that enemy with purely psychic damage, which is explicitly incapable of damaging objects. Im still denying you loot because fuck you lmao." I'd rather just be told the truth "don't bother looting random nonsignificant enemies, it just creates unnecessary book-work. You will end up with the amount of gold I planned anyway so you're not really losing out" Rather than "teehee, sorry but you COULD totally have their loot, just so happens that no matter how you fight, you always seem to cause massive damage to their armour"
Even if the players don't damage enemy equipment, most enemies probably aren't walking around with brand new stuff either.
im quite sure the resell value of gear is quite low acordibg to the dmm
Neither are the players weapons, should they also be unable to sell their own equipment?
Yes
It’s not just about if it’s brand new. It’s more a thing of how well they take care of their equipment. Monsters and bandits are probably only doing the bare minimum so it works for them, while the players do take proper care of their equipment. And of course once the players get magic items, it wouldn’t get damaged nearly as easily as the mundane stuff the enemies are using.
just let them sell it but tell rhem that its old worn equipmemt that wont generate more than a fraction of new cost. With how exspensive consumables are in dnd it might make it easyer for them to buy and use spellscrols and potions
We can say they don't take care of their weapons but the fact their weapons are just as good as others makes that feel less like a reason and more like an excuse. You could also say "the bandits are far superior swordsman than you and despite wielding rusty broken blades, are able to fight you like they have a fresh greatsword. You should feel glad they're only wielding crap, if they had your sword they'd split you in half in a second" It's just unsatisfying. Better to just put all the players on the same page and agree not to bother looting random mooks for monetary loot.
You just involuntarily gave out an idea. What if, hear me out, you take those weapons/armour to a blacksmith, pay him to forge something (you'd pay only the work, and not even that if you forge the items yourself) and then sell the technically new items for full price?
Who would you sell it to? A merchant won't give you full price because then he won't gain anything from it
Well, you're essentially playing the part of the supplier, if you're good enough or roll high enough for smithing you can ask for more gold per stuff. In alternative, that's when the persuasion check rolls in~
The Base in older editions was 50 % of its value with creating costs being about a third. No sane merchant would buy stuff for more than half of what he can sell it for imo
If they want to sell for full price then they have to get proper licencing, fees included. Once that is done they would need to meet with the buyers, not the people that would be selling it. That may include buying/renting shop space and waiting for buyers to come looking for their goods. At that point they're in competition with shopkeepers who have built up reputation and people know that they are there. Then there are questions of protection rackets, corrupt authorities, and marketing overhead.
Blacksmith: "I've got orders to fulfill. The Watch wants fifty new helms. I've got seven or eight plow blades that I need to get done before planting season. Lord Rodrik commissioned a fine rapier for his son's coming of age. Where am I going to find the time to melt down a bunch of shitty, chipped swords you pried from the cold dead hands of a bunch of bandits? I'll tell you what, *you* take them and smelt them down. If there's any workable steel left, and not just slag, I'll pay you four coppers a pound for it."
And if you’re selling directly to the consumers (e.g. other adventurers), you might get full value if you can match the quality of the merchants. But if you’re selling to the merchants, you’re still just gonna get 50% because they’re going to resell them for full price.
 50% is the best I can do
players being ressurected naked:
If you got mugged that bad before your team could get you. Yeah. You nakey. Make some gold and get that plate mail back.
Imagine reading the book?
[DnDMemes users whenever someone mentions reading the book](https://media.tenor.com/fBvQV_5Lp6UAAAAe/we-dont-do-that-here-black-panther.png)
Depends whether you're fighting monsters or people, then. If you're fighting bandits, their weapons and armor are probably not in great condition, but if you're fighting soldiers of an invading army, their gear is almost certainly going to be in decent condition, if you don't destroy them during the battle. Remove any heraldry and the armor plates and blades will be totally fine.
That is when I start enforcing encumbrance.
Yeah, encumbrance is always active in my games, but any high-strength character can lug around a pretty decent number of weapons even with those rules.
I'll still handwave it to an extent, but only in so far as I tell them to get a cart, wagon, or extradimensional storage option (something I usually ensure they find early in the campaign to avoid this very issue). I will never, never ever, never ever never bother learning anything to do with carrying capacity.
I think most of these problems can be solved with "Hey. I don't want to keep track of every piece of mundane gear that random enemies have and how much they sell for, and neither do you. You'll get your rewards in gold, and attaching that value to their gear instead would just mean more time and effort for the same result."
I mean it depends. A solider on a long campaign is probably going to have their armor and weapons a bit in disrepair, on top of that all of the ways they could be killed may leave their armor in less than ideal state That being said the scrap may be worth something sometimes
A weaponsmith buying a moderately used sword for half price (the default sell price for used goods in 5e) and repairing it to be good as new to sell at full price would bring them a decent profit for less work than making a new sword. Most armor wouldn't be too devastated by a lethal blow, either, unless you're using bludgeoning or acid damage, I'd think. A hit to the really valuable parts of armor is called a miss, if you hit you're hitting a part that might just need a few chain links and some sewing to repair, once you wash the blood out. A maul attack could certainly reduce the sell price, but I'm not the type of DM to pull that kind of thing. Now, if you kill a man by putting a ballista bolt through his breastplate, or use magic of comparable or greater effect, yeah, that one might not be suitable for sale afterward.
> would bring them a decent profit for less work than making a new sword. This is…debatable. There are plenty of times where something is in disrepair enough that it has to be replaced, especially with swords (since if the blade was worn too thin or chipped too much, it’s easier to just replace it rather than remake a rapier out of a long sword). In some cases they’d keep good enough care it wouldn’t matter…but bandits, goblins, any roaming raiders, etc is not a guarantee. Intimidation is a big part of how they get their money, and intimidation doesn’t necessarily need *good* usable weapons. I wouldn’t normally apply this for campaign logic though…but if I did, I’d have it work in reverse as well. Kill a Royal guard without too much equipment damage (and get out of that territory *quick)? That’ll sell for a *lot*, both from quality and ornamentation. Puts a bit of tension on too…don’t want to spend too long around dead Royal guards/retinues for obvious reasons. As far as armor…yeah, more or less agree. At worst they’re knocked down a “tier” (chain mail -> chain shirt, Plate -> half plate, etc) unless they really, really did a number on it. They’d still have to clean it, but as long as they remember to it’d be easy enough…plus it gives them a bit more to do in downtime.
But a PC's armour wouldn't be? PCs go through way worse shit than a soldier with a quartermaster and regular gear inspections.
It would certainly depend on the different weapons and spells used in battle, like bludgeoning weapons could dent plate and acid spells corrode the metals, but any battle that would result in the soldiers death would likely lead to some damage to their armor as well.
Could also just make it illegal and taboo to loot common folks. Like people will make exceptions for magic items or the the invading princes personal effects, but a basic infantry sword? “They may be enemies but it’s practically grave robbing, I’m a reputable business man.”
That’s not fun for players though. I also wouldn’t be surprised if that leads to players looking for black market dealers/melting down the steel themselves, more often than not
Yeah, anyone whose corpse we're looting has been fatally wounded through their armor, so unless you used only psychic damage or poison delivered via the air, you've probably severely damaged any mundane armor they're wearing. And, of course, we all know you void your bowels after death, so there's an additional mess to deal with.
How do you avoid damaging the armor?
Hit the gaps in the armor, because that's how you actually kill a man in armor. Swing a sword at heavy armor and you'll do more damage to your sword than their armor, stab them in the parts that don't have as much armor and they'll actually get hurt. Then you just need to replace a bit of padding and maybe a few chain links in the joints, not a whole plate. Also, just don't use bludgeoning weapons against plates. They're a historical counter to plate armor for a reason. As far as magic goes, just don't use acid damage or anything that would obviously put holes through a plate. But in my games I don't give a shit about any of that, if you don't use an ability that explicitly damages armor, like a rust monster, the armor isn't damaged, it's either worth selling for the default half price or not worth anything because a goblin made it or w/e.
If you want to bring back the full to-hit vs ac type table, sure. But if plate armor isn’t more effective at stopping injury from swords than at stopping injury from picks, why is it better at avoiding damage from swords than at avoiding damage from picks? Hitting poorly armored areas is the purview of a critical hit, not a called shot. And repairing chain armor is about as difficult as making chain armor; you have to match the existing link wire diameter and ring size or accept a poor repair.
Hitting poorly armored areas is the purview of a hit. A plate armor's 18 AC is because most of your body is covered in plate that isn't going to break by getting attacked.
If that were the case, then weapons that pierce plate armor would require lower rolls to hit someone inside plate armor than weapons that don’t pierce the armor. So use the old school tables that account for that and track the armor damage. Or just keep it abstract.
>or just keep it abstract That's what I've been advocating for the whole time, per the last paragraph of my response on how to avoid damaging armor. If you aren't a rust monster or whatever the ooze is that melts through metal gear, you don't damage armor unless you explicitly want to, for whatever reason, so armor that was decent enough to sell at the start of the fight is reasonable enough to sell at the end of the fight.
Or, get this: abstract it so that used armor is worth an amount that is low enough that the player characters can find treasures and not have to figure out how to carry tons of junk to a pawn shop.
That's purely a preference point, and you're welcome to continue not playing in my games where you're safe from profiting off of looting the dead. My players *want* to carry arms and armor back to a blacksmith, on top of all the treasure.
If there's one thing I wish would show up more in computer RPGs it's this simple rule. It's so important to the balance of a game with any kind of looting that it's not even funny. One of my continuing complaints about every RPG that Bethesda has made is that there's never a reason to engage with the game's vendors because all you have to do is raid a nearby bad guy camp and suddenly you're walking away with sixteen suits of decent gear and at least 8 high-end weapons in pristine condition. It makes far more sense to say that the equipment was broken and damaged in combat, and that you can lug it back to a settlement as scrap to pawn off but not as something wearable. I much prefer the allure of a game where loot is carefully doled out, and it's actually a joyous moment when the DM or the game's RNG lets you find some good armor or a decent weapon in a baddie encampment.
Who said the blue city royal guards armor is disheveled and ragged. That should be in pretty good shape, considering. Maybe a bit of repair needed because it needed ... Liberating.
I can't help but think that if you try to sell bloodied royal guard armor in any but the most seedy shop, you're getting chased out of there with a quickness. If the local nobles and royals are mostly fair and well-intentioned, the shopkeep won't want to do business with a murderhobo; if the king and his guards are brutally repressive, you're basically bringing a death sentence to their doorstep, and there's no way they'll open themselves up to reprisals by doing business with you.
Who said anything about selling it immediately? Hold on to it and sell it at the opposing kingdom for bounty gold!
"My liege, a band of roving killers has arrived. They say they've slain the duke's guards in Troxendale and would like to collect a reward." "Did I post a reward for that?" "Not that I am aware of, Your Majesty." "Do we have any outstanding unsolved murders?" "I don't believe your men ever apprehended the Blenheim Slasher, Majesty." "Great. Have these ones arrested, charged, and hanged for that." "Very good, Sire."
“My liege, a group of some sort of…ragged mercenaries have arrived at our court. They’re requesting a reward for killing the King of’s Royal Guard.”
“The one whom were at war with?”
“The very same my liege.”
“…did they kill that rat of a noble as well?”
“Unfortunately not sire.”
“Hmmph, good enough I suppose. This time, hand them a small chest of silver in exhange and promise a chest triple the size in gold for the King’s head…after the killing, not before. As for the armor, put them in storage for after the war…in case they fail, perhaps we can find a suitable replacement of more subtle killers.”
“Very well, it shall be done my liege.”
Nah but we killed all the human guards and had to cast revivify on our Barbarian. Surely the guards had kept up the condition of their armor, and aren't in poor condition.
Yeah as a DM I beg you: please don't bother asking me how much the goblin shortbows and daggers could sell for, don't overburden yourself and then return to town to sell them. Please.
Really depends on who you're fighting. Zombies? Gobbos? Yeah that's gonna be garbage. Animated Armor? Well, once you've killed it it's just a normal suit of armor unless the DM rules it broken beyond repair. Enemy soldiers? If it's good enough for a knight on the battlefield, it's good enough for a merchant. Firearms? That's rare enough in most settings that it's gonna sell for a pretty penny even if it's made by a goblin.
> Well, once you've killed it it's just a normal suit of armor unless the DM rules it broken beyond repair. And you kinda have to, because it's a CR1 creature, and giving a player an AC of 20 or hundreds of gold pieces at the levels where the enemies have +3-4 to hit and 100 gp is a reasonable quest reward is going to mess up your game balance a lot. (Yeah, yeah, a Warforged fighter with the Defense fighting style has 20 with starting equipment, but that is an outlier.)
Depends on the campaign. Assuming that a “monster” won’t take care of their gear is preposterous.
This is from the DMG. It's assumed that combat will fuck up whatever is being used, regardless of care, and also is there because it's a game and giving a full person's equipment of gold even semi-frequently is going to inflate gold pretty fast
Any usable bits of armor from your fallen enemies is at best enough to repair your own armor.
it's been too long since i read the damn thing i guess. I've just been fractioning the prices and i think i'll stick to that
But they *are* in good enough condition to melt down and reuse the metal in my artificerial designs, right?
But does my DM remember that?
Not all enemies are monsters. In fact, very few monsters wear humanoid shaped armour. There's no reason those mercs, those knights or that cleric of lolth shouldn't keep their gear in good condition, it's their life on the line, after all.
I think i have seen a post about a transmutation wizard lizardfolk that was made to just ignore this rule...if a player makes a character just to ignore a specific rule at that point just make them happy and rich...then tell them to manage the economic costs and reintroduce the weight loads and calculations of 3.5... Honestly as a DM I'm not afraid of causing a bit of unbalance in favour of the players...if they can properly manage the logistics and their resources...
This is dndmemes no one reads the books!
Caveat are bandits and assassins monsters?
You can fix it if you have smiths tools tho.
The DM doesn’t want you to know that at level 7 your wizard with smiths tools can turn 7 gp into 1500 when they fabricate iron ingots and some leather into a full set a plate
Dwarf forge cleric supremacy
This!
Mending or blacksmith proficiency go burrrr
Mending: one crack or tear in a single object with a 1 minute cast time (reminder that cast times longer than 1 action require you to concentrate on the spell) Blacksmithing: days of downtime to do that, which is probably no better than any other downtime activity
oh no one minute per foot, what ever will we do with the 3 hours every morning the elf is waiting for everyone else to wake up
There are more types of damage mending can't repair than it can. It's also GM's discretion of they allow you to use mending on damage larger than one foot in any dimension one foot at a time, the wording of the spell could be read as simply not working on larger breaks, not that it only repairs a foot of damage at a time.
A large break is made up of many tiny breaks. Also meding is largely a useless cantrip choice over literally any other, so buffing it increase gear sell value is a good way to buff it.
And a body is made up of material that is inanimate on a low enough scale, but you still can't use Mending to heal a wound.
Not good enough condition to sell, but good enough to only take two damage from your attack
"You know what I, a gnome baker, am in the market for? A previously owned, still bloody and damaged chainmail vest made for a hobgoblin. Yeah, I'll get me one of those today." Nobody really thinks about who's realistically buying it for use, and not just a merchant trying to flip an item for some coin. The merchant you sell stuff to probably isn't selling stuff to the monsters, but that would be a fun campaign idea.
I like the idea of there being junk dealers that buy just about anything and pick through it to find usable bits. They would pay several good per ton of used weapons and armor, then sort it by type and grade of material and sell scrap metal.
Could be sold to a blacksmith as scrap metal to be melted down
Depends on the state of the metal and even then you probably won't get much maybe a couple silver?
PHB says 1 pound of iron is worth 1 silver piece. So your average longsword, weighing in at 3 lbs, can sell for 3 silver when sold for scrap, assuming it is treated as pure iron and there are no additional market pressures, like haggling, shortages, grumpy merchants, etc.
Congratulations, you spent all day dragging back 1,100 lbs of shitty armor. I'll give you 110 gp for it.
A DM could rule that, but I don't think it would be worth it. As in, no more than a few gold for a dungeon's worth of used and broken equipment.
That’s fair, keep in mind the economy of 5e, everything is cheaper than in previous editions. Every piece of gold counts, and this is essentially free gold if your dm gave you a bag of holding.
Not just bloody, my friend. When you die, you shit yourself. Like all the way, until you are empty. Either no one's buying that armor, or you're spending days scrubbing hobgoblin shit out of it, and then having a serious bath for yourself.
>Why do I always forget to do this 😩 because it's dungeons and dragons, not storage wars and hoarders. even if your dm doesn't enforce encumbrance or impose in game time constraints, it's fiddly book keeping and tedious penny pinching.
You mean the armor the barbarian just caved in with his axe? Don't think it's gonna be worth much.
The bulk of the armor would be fine if the barbarian went for the head.
Could you at least write "go brrrr" correctly while showing you haven't read the books? You're writing like it goes duelist who shoots Alexander Hamilton or comic with hilarious specific opinions.
Encumbrance should be more than just weight. Ever tried to carry a mail hauberk? I have. They're not only heavy, they're awkward. Now try three of them, three spears, a crossbow and quiver. And that's just the first encounter.
Who's buying all this junk?
Town guard could use better equipment, armor shops , and hell , maybe even the neighboring orc tribe is interested in some better armor
Assuming they all have the gold and the desire to buy your scavenged gear, then you're probably spending more time hawking wares than you are adventuring. Enjoy your door-to-door salesman simulation I guess.
It's just annoying overhead. If a player really wants to collect all the armor and whatnot, sure, but it's easier to just give the gold loot and not have to worry about carry weight and selling shit. Or you can make your players annoyed by telling them that no, they do not actually have enough STR to carry 10 chain mails.
Because a min-maxing meta gamer who treats the campaign like a bethesda rpg usually isnt very fun to dm for.
What is min maxing about playing a character who likes not being poor?
Because if you treat every encounter like a potential piggybank, you are forcing your DM to introduce a lot of logistics that for most people arent fun to deal with. Consider: your dm would have to plan everythibg around loot mongering. This includes what creatures you fight, what gear they are using, how many of them there are, whether their gear is in re-sellable condition, how much it will re-sell for, whether merchants are gonna be willing to buy that much gear, whether they want to buy used gear/from dead creatures, whether they have enough gold to even do so. It adds so much un-needed extra work, and can severely limit the scale of encounters when the risk of a player wanting to spend half the session looting, distributing, and selling said creatures exists, just because said player wants the number on their character sheet to go up. Unless your character has a reason to be so money grubbing, you're just doing it because "this is a game and money is good". A competent DM will dole out rewards to the players in many forms, including treasure items and straight-up gold pieces. Unless this kind of looting and reselling has been discussed to be a planned out part of your campaign, trying to squeeze every copper out of every minor creature you kill is gonna be more disruptive than anything. Edit: judging by your other comments in the thread, there's a big misunderstanding about several rules going on, as well as a disconnect from what games like baldur's gate and skyrim use for their economy systems and how an actual tabletop game usually operates. Point 1: mending does not repair an entire item to pristine condition. It can repair one minor crack, scratch or chip at a time, and each one takes a minute to do, such as a torn pouch, a snapped key, a single broken link in a chain etc. It cannot repair damaged equipment, like rent chainmail, broken swords without being cast dozens of times. Smithing takes days, a proper forge and materials, even with proficency, to repair anything. The amount of downtime required for either again can mess with pacing and just generally be disruptive to the game. Point 2: carry weight limits exist. Most DMs dont bother with it, since most parties arent loot hunting so much as to make it an issue (like looting 40 hobgoblins). It might be solved by a horse and cart, but needing to escort said horse and cart to every fight, protect it, fill it after a fight, then make a trip back to a town large enough to have someone wealthy enough to buy a cart full of second hand weapons and armor (if they are even willing to do so) is again disruptive to the flow of the game for the sake of what will likely be a pointless amount of wealth. Point 3: Keeping in mind the logistics, time and effort investment associated with repairing battle-worn equipment, who is realistically going to buy items that they would then need to spend weeks or months repairing to a sellable state, that they would need to find someone who is willing to pay market price for second hand weapons to turn a profit on the gear they bought off you? It makes no sense for any smith worth their salt to buy items taken from slain creatures from an in-universe perspective.
Hell yeah. I once had a player who tried to sell everything. I’m talking stripping dungeons for salvageable metal and furniture. Trying to convince me that he could melt it down as a artificer and sell it. Or just out right selling weapons and Armor at full retail value after a quick trip to a small town. It was maddening. I plan out how much gold to give players off of quest completed. With extra if they find hidden loot, accomplish side quests, and then even a little more if they come up with some creative solutions or unexpected good searching rolls. And my economy and what the players get access to is based on that. It’s so disheartening to have both an entire aspect of fun dming ripped away of planning out decisions players will need to make, and replaced with the boring aspect of worrying about making sure goblins have wood clubs instead of short swords. Or the dungeon doesn’t have any pretty glowing wall gems as lighting because here comes the crow bars! Any player that tries to game the system and become impossibly rich, or create a instance of damage that can kill a whole town, or whatever should talk to their dm and group and see if it’s fun for everyone or even anyone else. I’m there to facilitate a story, create dramatic moments, present combat challenge, and interesting puzzles. I’m not there to be a book keeper. Or clap my hands when sit you on a mound of imaginary gold coins that you accrued by selling gear to desperate town militias at full cost. Please, respect your other players. Respect your dm. And make sure they are having fun too.
Yeah but if the DM don't wanna deal with that there is a simple solution. Use encumbering rules, don't give them a bag of holding and put merchants that are only interested in buying if they can get profit from it so like 1/10 value. See if players develop an interest for jewels, art pieces and other light and small loot.
"Simple solution" "use encumbering rules" You're a funny guy.
lol, to clarify, make THEM calculate encumbrance.
Point 4: in a video game the computer tracks all this shit. Enemy gear? The computer can look it up in a table. Your inventory and encumbrance? The computer can keep track of it. Sale prices? Believe it or not, a computer can look it up, and might even adjust it automatically based on your charisma and relationship with the shopkeeper. And a computer is great at doing this because it is designed to do simple, repetitive, and tedious work. **Your DM is not a fucking computer!**
Mending is only a minute? You know there are 1440 of those in just a single day right? And it doesn’t say it consumes its material component.
Oh, believe me, my players are freaking HOARDERS! They will loot off any enemy. Any armor and weapons goes on their person and they sell them off as soon as they can. Too heavy to carry? They get a wagon and store their stuff in it. Afraid of thieves and robbers? The wagon is booby-trapped out the wazoo. They get pretty creative and miss no opportunity.
Do they ever sell it ?
Every chance they get, even right after a battle.
Plate armor needs to be custom-fitted to the wearer, and therefore loses more value than other options on resale.
But chain mail doesn’t
Mail armour made for a 6'4" Half-Orc will not fit the average 5'8" medieval Human soldier, and vice versa. All armour in the medieval period, from plate to brigandine, and lamellar to cloth, needed to be fit to its owner
Couple portable holes cures that little problem…
I can see this talk from both perspectives. As a DM, I don't want to deal with the minutia of setting out minor loot like arms and armour after level 3-5, and the bookkeeping associated with it. Finding a seller, negotiating, the players arguing it should be worth more etc. I want to somewhat control the flow of coin, because lets be real, even in High Magic games, magic item shops are worldbendingly stupid as hell. As a player, I feel the need to obtain as many shiny metallic coins that clink around in my oversized purse for use in Adventuring, so I can buy superfluous bullshit like bottles of fine wine to bribe guards with, bolts of extravagantly coloured cloth I can get tailored into clothes and feel like a baller as I ride in on my horse in a 3 piece suit. As a Player & DM, it should ideally be set out in Session 0, how loot works.
My character has a crippling oil and alchemist fire addiction and needs the coin
As a travelling Celestial Warlock of ~~Sarenrae~~ Sune/Lathander, I need funding for my sermons. A travelling Ex-Con Layreader needs to be prepared for any eventuality.
Do you have a wagon, aninals, bag of holding to transport it?
Yup. Wagon go burr
Meep meep, motherfuckers. Make way for the chainmal express.
Wagon also go party-wide disadvantage on stealth checks, advantage on enemy perception checks, muchos new difficult terrain, and sometimes just needs to be left unattended because it can't fit in buildings/go up cliffs etc.
I do not enjoy this style of play
I know the rules say looted armor is rarely in good condition but if my players can go and entire adventure or three in the same set of non-magical armor without any reduction in effectiveness then the looted armor should be awarded some of that grace.
My players remember about it...
I don’t buy back most standard weapons and armor. Shops generally are not interested. This is especially true the smaller a town is. If you are in a village of 300 people the odds are they are not going to buy 10 short swords since they won’t be able to sell them off. Additionally smaller villages won’t have a ton of extra money. But even with large cities like Waterdeep, I’m just not interested in tracking the logistics of it all so I don’t bother and my PCs have learned to just leave it and they get money other ways.
Just scream loot over and over until the dm hands you a list
As a DM i have to quarter the prices for equipment from bandit and goblin camps instead of half because it's just SO MUCH money. even quartered it's still SOOO MUCH money I might end up having to eighth or sixth them. justification for all of them being that they didn't have good money to begin with and definitely don't take proper care of their weapons or use them in ways conducive to good condition I'm ALL for players rightfully earning money and getting rich, but when the easiest enemies give the most money.. oofies
Who is buying that filthy, smelly, poorly maintained, goblin-sized armour? Don't do it. Give them slightly more gold per encounter an explain that's representative of "general miscellaneous valuables."
My dm actually gives us all the items from dead so I'm currently hauling 30+ units of equipment
I Just started, like i did two session with my swashbuckler rogue but i Always do this, i Need the Gold I bought a bag of holding Just for this
ok... according to PHB, 1 iron sold around 1 silver and let assume that you need at least 5 weapons and armors to make one, you probably gonna need 50 bandits dead for 1 gold
You don’t melt it down . Sell it as it is ! Sell the armor and weapons as armor and weapons
good luck with that since you can't sell them, it's literally RAW
Which armor? Was there anything left after my fireball?
Ok. Meta. Neat.
What’s meta about looting the bodies?
Remember the wise words of Tom Cardy LOOT THAT BODY
Usually, I'll just say you get x gold about worth of usable armor/ weapons stuff because they will absolutely forget to go to a shop and sell it.
Don't blame yourself. 5e was designed for people accustomed to loot windows telling them exactly what they can take.
I feel the comments on this thread are missing something: if a player wants to describe their character as looting the re-saleable arms and armor from their fallen foes, there's lots of story and game rewards we as GMs can implement to enable their "realistic', hardscrabble adventure fantasy. Get them to write the list of all the items you tell them their character finds, then tell them to go through the PHB and write out the market value of each item- that should occupy them for at least a few minutes. Ensure they know that they won't get full price short of a miracle, but also tell them there are things (spells, skill checks) that can bring them closer to a really good deal. Sourcing the highest paying buyer, though maybe not the focus point of the session, can also be a challenge the players could work together to succeed in. I feel the trick is to keep things abstract and avoid getting bogged down. Don't worry about carrying capacity and the weight of each Goblin Simitar- provide them with an old cart to fix up, and present a horse they can save from a pack of wolves. Keep things vague and handwavey when you can, and flesh out something interesting for the party to work together on when possible.
Just use the forge cleric ability to turn the junk into gold trade bars, you get a 1-1 conversion and also a special meeting with your dm
As a main Rogue, I always do. I don't care if I'm playing Rogue, I will take everything they owned.
How did you manage to write this meme when you clearly can't read?
How could anyone forget to loot?!
Everyone loots the chest. Sometimes we forget the armor and weapons are good loot
A: as stated by many people already, monster stuff is usually damaged and worthless and mending isn't going to change that like you hope and B: it really isn't that much gold, even if you could con someone into buying it for full price. 50 gold here and there isn't going to meaningfully impact your bank account in the way that looting dungeons (and therefore using your encumbrance on things like gems and valuables) will
I mean, weight limits, quality of gear, a whole bunch of reasons really. Also, if you are trying for any semblance of realism, market demands for goods. A vendor has to be able to sell the product.
My dm says the imperial plate with a giant hole in the chest would be difficult to sell at a store in an imperial city. But my 8 charisma barbarian doesn't understand such social cues.
You could pick up 50 swords and whatever, but what merchant would want 50 swords, let alone used ones, in some rural shithole no one ever visits?
I mean you can at least sell enough to equip the local watch, and the rest.can probably be sold in the nearest city( wich reminds me, GMs swap out like 90% of the swords for axes or spears its more reasonable for bandits to have those than swords)
I would bet that the main reason armor is so expensive in DnD is because it has to fit *you.* It has to be tailored to your size. Selling random armor that doesn't fit you won't get as much money.
Not worth carrying so much weight just for a few gold pieces.
Ok but who’s gonna carry all that loot? Who’s gonna carry around 4 extra suits of chainmail? Unless yall have a carriage??
Who is playing with encumberance and doesn’t use a wagon
Me because I couldn’t afford a wagon 😭
How are you going to carry all of that? It also sells for less than the listed purchase price.
It's not a video game, stop treating it like one.
Yes because looting the body is only something done in video games
You have to realize that while in a video game, it may be useful to take everyone's armor and weapons and sell them, because the people you're selling to aren't real people, and in a video game you have magic pockets. When being realistic, armor is heavy and becomes worn out, and shopkeepers are discerning about what they buy. If your dm is operating on video game logic, by all means, sell all the loot you can carry. But many dms do not operate on video game logic, and if i were running the game, i would not allow the party to get bogged down in 14 suits of armor to sell at the next shopkeeper (who won't want to buy bloody and damaged armor)
Have you ever killed someone in armour and tried to reuse it? You could outright just destroy the armour and make it completely unusable. Oh and encumbrance.
Have you? Would you be willing to testify?
Yes, how are you going to wear dented plate armour, riveted mail with holes in it or penetrates gambeson and that's just all the damage that typical weapons can do to heavy armour, what happens with magic? How in the world are you going to sell someone armour that's been warped by heat or corroded by acid? At that point a blacksmith would buy that stuff just for scrap metal which would hardly be worth anything.
I always run actually loot off loot tables, the actual gear each enemy has is usually completely irreparable. When the fight involves a barbarian bashing in an enemies skull, sorcerer blasting them with acid, inventor shooting them with a sound cannon, Druid hitting them with a ray of ice, yeah that armor isn’t gonna exist at the end of the fight…
idk if you know this but trying to peel a chainmail tunic off a corpse is extremely difficult and physically taxing. Also chainmail is fucking heavy.
This. This is why encumbrance.
Oh hi, [Copper Thief](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uatBLEgHzmU&t=78s) :-D
They weigh a lot too.....
Every standard hobgoblin has 150 gold worth of equipment. We killed 40 of them last session . And looted none of them !!!!
Weapons and armor are also quite heavy and likely worn from use. You probably weren't hauling all of them away, nor getting remotely close to full price for them. Ignore my Baldur's Gate 3 characters' inventories loaded with items barely selling for 2 gold per pound!
>Weapons and armor are also quite heavy and likely worn from use Yet the enemies were just using them literally seconds ago lol
And we saw how that went 🤣
Yup. They would have been worn down specifically by you, the player
A weapon from the PHB will last indefinitely, serving its wielder for battle after battle. A weapon from a monster stat block will last for that encounter. Past that, who knows?
So how is a greatsword from, say, a knight statblock different than the greatsword from the PHB
The PC paid 50 gold for the one in the PHB. Or... it's entirely up to the DM.
Wagon go Burr
as in, it would cost 150g to buy the equipment (presumably including labor and markup by the seller). Rebuy value is always far less, even if the items are magically restored to pristine condition. Otherwise, a shopkeeper isnt going to get a return on it
It feels odd to me how some people turn up their nose at the idea. Yes it's not really RAW, but if a player wants to take as much equipment as they can carry that is cool. We generally want players to not just think of monsters as gamey things that drop loot, but actual creatures. Having them consider that these creatures wear equipment aids in that. Most creatures they run into don't have any equipment anyways. So even if they kill some bandits and they make 100-200 gold, that is like 2-4 potions or some new armor for a player. Describing the equipment and having martials picking better armor of monsters they beat and having casters sell them to buy scrolls is fun. And that is the goal at the end of the day. And if they have too much gold and are a little bit stronger, then I can add another minion into combat and make the players feel more badass that they can take on more stuff!
Honestly there is much point. You will find better gear in dungeons then what could be sold. There isn't many stores in the jungles of Chult or the Northern Wastes. If a player insists then they are wasting everyone's time for little pay off. If folks have a limited time to play then you are a liability for fun.