Buying and Selling

We've been talking about creating some NPC "fences" to add some variety to our treasure disposition.  I thought I'd re-post the "Buying and Selling" section of the Gear Book for the campaign, to put some things into perspective:

Buying and Selling

List price: each item has a price listed in silver, copper or gold pieces.  This is the retail price an adventurer can expect to pay in a town market or shop.

List price with an “R”:  if the price has an “R” after it, it is either rare, restricted, or requires special arrangements.  A player must get specific permission from the DM in order to buy the item and cannot just assume it is immediately available.

Loot price: items that have been captured as loot or plunder from raids or dungeon adventures can be sold at the town market for 1/3 of their list price.  A player can attempt to make a harder bargain.  Roll 1d20, add the character’s Charisma reaction bonus.  If the total is 14 or greater, the character gets 50% of list price.  If the total is 4 or less, he walks away with only 15%, shaking his head wondering how it happened.

Selling at Auction:  players can put up lots of goods for wholesale auction.  Find the total list price of each lot and roll 1d6 times 10% for the final value gotten at auction.

Fence price: goods that are stolen, illegal, or otherwise too hot to handle can be sold for 10% of their list price, assuming a fence can be found.  A thief character can always find a fence in his home town.  Thieves can find a fence in a new town 25% chance per week.  Non-thieves have a 5% chance per week of finding a fence.

Pawning Goods:  at a pawn-broker a character can deposit an item and get a loan equal to 25% of the list price.  If he pays the pawnbroker back 10% of the amount loaned within 6 months, he returns the pawned item.  If he fails to pay the money back, the broker puts the item up for sale (typically for 50% of list).  If you buy an item from a pawn-broker there is a 1 in 8 chance that it will turn out to be defective.

Buying at Auction:  sometimes rare goods are sold at auction (gems, jewelry, excellent wine etc).  If a PC is interested, roll 1d6 for the number of interested bidders.  For each bidder roll 3d6 x10% to get his maximum bid as a percentage of the list price, however, each “6” rolled results in another d6 added to the total (subsequent “6”’s result in additional d6’s).  Run the auction out with the various bidders dropping out when their maximum is reached.

We are thinking about creating a set of "special fence" cards to be shuffled into the henchmen/hirelings deck.  These would presumably be more on the lines of personal contacts that would buy specific goods at a higher rate than the 1/3 "loot price" or the 10% "fence" price.  

I'm starting to think that maybe we could put these contacts into the green "random items" deck, rather than the henchman deck.  I've bought a bunch more green index cards and that deck, so far, has had things of more interest to the low-level adventurer.   Of course, we'd have to change them to 3x5 from 4x6, but otherwise it would work.