One of my players asked about using the metal from the green meteoric iron sword they sold in town to get a knife made.
In other words, could the swordsmith they presumably sold it to (his supposition - likely it was some trader) use the metal from it to craft a knife?
Yes, and no.
Yes, having a weapon they found melted down, and the metal used for a specific new purpose, is fine. It's not necessarily cheaper - it probably is not, once you factor in all the costs of a custom job where you specify both additional work (melt a weapon down, and use only that material for a new one.) You'd have to sell the remaining metal as scrap metal, or just pay to have it melted down and used. Some players will balk at the extra, but remember you're dealing with guild experts, and telling them how you want their job done is likely to cost extra.
No, you can't sell a weapon for its value as a complete, useable item, and then use the material from it for a custom job. The sale price assumes someone bought it intended it for resale (merchant buys at 40%, sell at 100% to a final buyer). You cannot realize the value of the item for its resale value, and get access to the components of that item as scrap.
Basically you can't realize the value of something as loot and get utility out of it as well. You can decide to keep something, not realize its value as loot, and then get some use out of it as another thing. You either decide to keep it and/or get it changed/modified/used/etc. in town, or you sell it on the spot and get it counted as loot. No double-dipping!
To be fair... if the merchant has yet sold the item and the PC wants to buy it back at full value to have it used for materials, that should be perfectly doable.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. Assuming of course that enough time hasn't elapsed so that the vendor has already sold it. Actually, you've inspired an evil idea in my head that the item isn't yet sold, but the merchant might have lined up another buyer already (or claims such) and sets up a bidding war...
DeleteSure, in a normal campaign. Mine is as much Wizardry as DF, though, so when something is sold . . . it's gone. I really should let people buy stuff back that they sold off at a higher price . . . but I like the idea that realizing something as loot (and thus XP) really does remove it from the game. If you really want something, you have to keep it, not buy it.
DeleteDepending on the original item (source materials) and the desired new product, I might conceivably give the PC a discount on the final cost of the latter based upon the material value of the former. That would of course depend on the nature of the item(s) in question, and the labour time/skill of the armourer/smith in question is quite possibly a far bigger factor in the cost for a special-order weapon.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, that was just a side note. Absolutely agree on your central point about the double-dipping. In fact it feels so obvious that I was surprised it needed to be stated.
It took 10 years for someone to ask, so I think most of us were on the same page.
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