Standards for "off-the-shelf" magic items?

dergon darkhelm · Post by **dergon darkhelm** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 3:36 pm

OK....now I'm starting to regret the welcoming of commentary regarding crafting in this thread.

SO....to refocus:

This thread was not meant to ask whether crafting of magic items should be allowed in NWN2 nor to discuss it's feasibilty of implementation.

This thread was also not meant to ask whether ALFA in NWN2 should be a high magic or low magic environment. Wealth standards have already been adopted that do a good job of showing what items should/should not be possessed by characters or varying levels.

________

I start with an assumption: Some servers in ALFA for NWN2 will have merchants that allow the purchasing of magic items directly.

If this assumption is correct, then the following question follows:

What, if any, standards will be implemented to provide inter-server consistency and canon based accuracy for the availability of magical items purchased through merchants?

Rusty · Post by **Rusty** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 3:42 pm

Well, the standards do exist... they are just not universally enforced. Let us hope that they will be for NWN2.

There ought to be a clear relationship between area population and:
(1) Merchant available gold;
(2) Merchant maximum spend; and,
(3) Maximum value-item.

Thus, when a server applies for Live the reviewing team will be able to analyse this aspect of a server's merchants just as they will be able to check buyback rates fall within the acceptable boundaries. Servers with broken merchants ought to not be granted Live status.

fluffmonster · Post by **fluffmonster** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 4:50 pm

Yes, the intention is to enforce more consistency in nwn2, make it a condition of go-live server review. For nwn1, there was a "can't put the genie back in the bottle" perspective on it which is why it seems little was done about it for existing servers.

HEEGZ · Post by **HEEGZ** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 4:56 pm

Rusty wrote:Well, the standards do exist... they are just not universally enforced. Let us hope that they will be for NWN2.

Do you have a link, or we just using the values in the DMG? I couldn't find it with a quick look around. Thanks.

- Nate

Rusty · Post by **Rusty** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 5:11 pm

I used the DMG values for the merchants in Luskan; that's fine for NWN1.

HEEGZ · Post by **HEEGZ** » Tue Dec 05, 2006 5:19 pm

Okay, so as far as standards is concerned, for NWN2 our Live servers will be using Table 5-2 of the DMG for determining community wealth. Is there a seperate standard needed for magical items as Dergon has asked, or is it entirely at the discretion of the build team? My preference is to leave it open, ie. no rule. I know I've already stated any server I will build will have limited magic availability (w/o DMs that is) if that is an option.

- HEEGZ

Mayhem · Post by **Mayhem** » Wed Dec 06, 2006 5:37 pm

Minor point that may need considering vis the DMG wealth standards.

They are designed for games in which there is one PC adventuring party arriving in the town to spend their gold.

We do not know if the amount of gold/goods suggested represents:

a) a finite amount of wealth for the entire town

or

b) a proportion of the wealth available, but with some assumption that there are NPC adventurers out there as well taking their share of the pie.

Thats no probelm in PNP, of course.

But in ALFA, it may well be that there will be multiple parties of PCs trying to share the available purchasing power/goods to buy in a given sized town. So it may be that the amounts in the DMG are not, in fact, the correct level that we need to set for ALFA merchants.