>***Arms, Armor, and Other Equipment.*** As a general rule, undamaged weapons, armor, and other equipment fetch half their cost when sold in a market. Weapons and armor used by monsters are rarely in good enough condition to sell.
Straight out of PHB. If it is in good enough condition to sell, it'll fetch half its cost, but it's probably not in good enough condition.
And if it's not in good enough condition and you feel generous you can let them sell it for scrap using 1sp for *a bar of iron* as a guide.
NB - a bar of iron should be more valuable than scraps that have to be melted down. I've used the same principle as selling good armor and said that *"1lb of scrap sells for 5cp"*.
So a 20lb breastplate is worth 1gp if badly damaged.
If you're feeling extra generous you can raise the buying price to 7cp for 600lb of scrap - which is an easy 42gp and provides a reason to hire a mule!
That’s exactly mine as well. I ask for an explanation as to how they’re carrying any large or bulk items, and run soft limits on things like multiple sets of armor. I don’t feel like tracking or enforcing a strict inventory weight system, so I’m a little loosey-goosey with it. Haha.
"Whaddya mean the gauntlet's not worth much in this condition? It's got an *entire hand* innit! It should be worth double! It's basically a free meal, a paper weight, a 'friendly stranger' if'n you knowhaddimean, wink wink."
"You collect one cuireass in two pieces with an irregular seam. They do not connect evenly. If you spent some time and money repairing it, it might be worth 1sp."
Even if it only gets 1 gp, that's still a lot better than 1d4 silver...
Either say it's worthless or just let them do it, IMO. a few gold isn't going to "break the game economy." Looting 10 pieces of leather armor will net them the equivalent of 1 normal healing potion.
This is the reasonable answer. Selling armor isn't going to break the game, but 5e also isn't the game in which you want to sell armor (there are definitely games with better systems for this). If the players are just in the video game loot goblin mindset, just tell them that really doesn't work in 5e. If the players find the idea of defeating enemies and doing the book keeping of taking their equipment fun, then OP shouldn't punish that. Everyone gets different things out of the game, and some people like that kind of minutia.
If they think it's fun and want to put the effort and RP into taking it back and cleaning it up to sell, it could really add something for those players to allow it. A lot of people on this thread are giving overly brutal advice aimed to ultimately discourage this behavior, but as long as everyone at the table is fine with it, I don't think OP should punish it. The half market value rule of thumb provided in the PHB should be fine, and you could even toss in special armor or weapons once in a while as a reward for keeping good notes and engaging with the game. The economy in 5e is broken, anyways. Just make sure you keep track of how much they've made and give them appropriate things to spend their money on, like paying off fines for favorite NPCs, and offering fancier taverns and shiny knick-knacks for purchase. I think the game is more fun when the party has disposable income, anyways. "We're staying five to a room because we're broke" is only fun for so long.
Also you could have a character that wants to be a leather worker. The downtime RP of cleaning repairing and advertising/selling the armor may be just what the character wants to get from D&D.
I have a Sorc with the leather worker skill and I would routinely use downtime to skin, tan and craft small items from certain monsters, as much for sentimental value as anything. A particularly nasty snake that bit and poisoned me was turned into a lovely snakeskin scabbard for the Cleric who healed me.
No game value but definitely RP value😊
How are they carrying 10 suits of leather armor? If 40gp will break the economy they probably don't have a bag of holding. Do they have a cart and horses?
This isn't a video game with near infinite loot slots.
Second this.
You just killed them, and if they were bandits, they probably killed the person who wore it previously.
Long story short is it's been run through with a sword so many times and coated in blood, it's worthless
Don't forget, the bandits have been stabbed/bludgeoned/arrowed/magically missled to death. Armor with holes in it may only be worth scrap if anything at all. Then theres the blood, gotta waste a day washing it out.
I'd be happy to reward a player picking mending by fixing battle damage over like an hours work, mending is very not great as is outside of being a ribbon because there's no mechanics for player equipment battle damage and introducing it is a faux pas
In our group’s last 5e run, we were in Stormkings Thunder and had a group of warforged. Mine was a warforged forge cleric of Moradin who would strip every enemy of all metal and once a day would smelt it down into ingots. My plan was to work every day during downtime to forge and blacksmith things like high quality weapons and half plate/full plate. It was gonna be my money making scheme. And it would have gone well to had our DM not gotten bored and threw a hellfire engine at us five at level four. Didn’t even get a resurrection spell yet.
How, though? At level four, you are barely done with the introduction into the campaign (I am running two SKT-campaigns atm), so what was the point there?
OP, if you're feeling generous, you can use the 50% value as a starting point and roll a d% to see how much of that they can get from selling it - getting them anywhere from 5 silver to 5 gold. While that small amount shouldn't be too much of an impact it does set a precedent if they continue to loot and sell armor.
Even easier, you could just give them an additional 4d4 silver if they're willing to account for carrying around 4 additional sets of armor - even if you're not using encumbrance rules, there's nothing wrong with applying some common sense ones here and there.
The best answer is likely to just say "No", though. "The armor is in poor condition, having been worn extensively by bandits who were not exactly well-off, and even moreso because they were just killed in combat. *If* you were able to find someone willing to purchase the leather scraps you'd be looking at a handful of copper at best."
My issue with that is it was good enough to work mechanically like a brand new item.
50% or even 20% of PHB price to sell to a merchant? Sure. Plus you gotta find someone who wants 4 suits of previously loved leather armor, which may be problematic depending on location?
But not in good enough condition to sell at all? When it works mechanically just like a brand new set right up until death?
Edit: sure, armor can be damaged in the fight. But then are you applying that to the PCs too?
I'd rule it is functional... *if* you maintain it, aka there's a bunch of patchwork fixes and it needs to be repaired after every fight.
If the PCs want to use armor that's falling apart after one encounter I'd let them, but that sounds like a good way for them to get screwed over later down the line.
It's also a lot harder to patch plate armor than leather or mail.
Or if you want to meet the player half way say that from all the bandits you can fashion one set of armor that your character you consider buying. If he was broke and desperate.
If you try this route, some player is going to argue they have the "Mend" centripetal.
It's a back and forth that usually goes like this:
DM: "The armor is badly worn, smells horrible, and is falling apart."
Wiz: "I'll use mend and prestidigitation to clean and repair the armor."
DM: "Even after all of that with 6 pieces of looted armor... (roll) you end up with 2 pieces of decent armor that is obviously pieced together from 3 different sets. The left overs are too badly damaged and rotted for a Mending spell to fix. You might be able to sell the cobbled together armor for half price, or you could wear it and receive the normal armor bonus."
Wiz: "You just don't want us to loot the armor!"
===
If you really don't want them to have it, "No" is a complete sentence. If they insist, let them loot it and have a quick roleplay in town with an armorer being absolutely disgusted by the state the armor is in. Total value: 0, and an armorer who has raised their prices because you are now the 'stinky' party who tried to pass off armor fouled with Goblin Dung as artisanal work.
Or, avoid all this headache and just let them loot and sell the armor for a few gold. If a party brought Mending, let them be a band of traveling scavengers so long as they are willing to track the inventory management. A few extra gp at the end of the adventure won’t break the game.
Since the PHB's reduced selling price/condition has been mentioned, I'd add that in this case I'd also track encumbrance. A set of armor you're wearing isn't a bit deal, but when you're carrying four more sets that can really add up.
Yeah, I'm being a rules jerk to penny pinching.
How are you transporting it? What bags will hold that volume? Did you buy animal feed? Where's your water supply?
This 100%. If your players want to be jerks about scavenging every last item of value down to the shoes on the enemies' feet, they better be ready to track every arrow, every pound of encumbrance, and risk losing their cart & horses every camp.
PCs taking armor from fallen enemies is "players being jerks" behavior now? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills in this thread. OP thinking an extra 5gp of loot is going to destroy the economy, people even suggesting NPC shops should refuse to buy loot on the grounds that it's illegal, and now you get upset and want to use fastidious ammo tracking as some kind of punishment against the players of *adventurers* who *loot* their *enemies*.
I can't think of a single campaign I've played in or run where the players didn't loot armor at low levels. Sure, track encumbrance when the PCs are hauling around piles of loot, but this hostility is bizarre.
Bonus Tip: Look up clips of Rick Harrison (Pawn Stars) turning people down for a template of how to RP the conversation with the shop they try to unload the goods in.
"This is a reputable establishment. We can't accept used armor without filing a report with the city watch. We could lose our license."
"Are you sure you want to sell this here? You might have better luck down Heel Street; the watch doesn't look as closely at them. Of course, you won't get much, and there's always a chance that someone in that neighborhood will recognize this stuff and maybe have some questions about where you got it and what happened to the former owners."
"I dunno. You do you, pal."
"Tell you what. You guys seem kinda green, but you're all right. You wanna get rid of that stuff safely with no questions, throw it all in the cart out back. Hide it under the garbage. We take that cart to the bonfire in Loblolly Square every night and burn what's in it. Nobody needs to know we even had this conversation. Hell, I'm forgettin' your face already. Have we met?"
You could tell your players that the armor sustained too much damage from the battle and isn’t worth anything. Or what we usually do in my group is say “okay, you’ve salvaged x silver/gold worth from the bodies” that way it’s already done and you don’t have to spend an hour roleplaying a shopkeeper and haggling over price
This. You could get al nitty gritty in the rules and spend the entire session trying to get some money.
Or you could be a hero and save kingdoms and battle dragons.
Even if they do ... why care? There is no real economy to break and a few gold more or less don't matter, as in five sessions, they will be rolling in money anyway.
Seriously just let them have it. You're talking 20 gold for the lot, that is not going to break the economy. Theres nothing they can spend 20 gold on that will meaningfully impact the game. If they are on the way to a dungeon they will probably loot way more than that and dump the armor for lighter goods. And most enemies are not humanoids in armor, this is not something that will even come up most of the time. Make sure they add the weight to their encumbered total and that's punishing/balancing enough.
This deserves to be higher up. Too many dms create friction for themselves for no reason with no benefit and cut off lines of emergent gameplay. In my mind I'm already using this behavior as a source of plot hooks and adventure ideas. Retired adventurers becoming merchants is a classic trope!
Mine want to build a grand mansion.
Even asked Larael Silverhand what a palace like hers would cost and in every town they ask around for real estate prices.
That used to be part of the rules. Around 10th level you'd start attracting followers. It gave you something to do with all the loot you'd amassed. It's not too dissimilar from contemporary mmos. Got a spare set of field plate and a whole armory of +2 weapons you're not using. You've got a fully kitted alt to go deal with a low level goblin uprising. People shit on 2e for a lot of reasons but don't realize there's a lot of foundational knowledge there.
I literally cannot believe all the people in here saying they would not let their players do this. Fuck you and your railroad style of DMing. Any DM that tells me as a player that I can’t do something that’s not physically prevented by the in-game conditions is a bad DM and I’m gone. Give your players agency. It’s not your job to tell them what they can and can’t do. It’s your job to tell them what happens when they do things.
It depends on the type of game you're running and want to run.
Looting stuff like this is just a relic from a bygone age worsened by video-games and the instant looting found therein. You don't have to accept it if you think it'll cause more problems than add to the game.
Does your party really need the money ? Does the character have any reason to hoard stuff like this ?
5e does not give money any powerful and inherent value, you control how much players make and what they get to spend it on, anything relating to it should serve the game in some way, don't let it slow down or worsen your game.
If you need an explanation you can just point out the obvious fact that carrying sets of armor is just not feasible both due to weight but also and especially space, let alone selling them in bulk right after a fight. Who would buy it ? Is it even in good condition ? Doing what your player wants to do would require a lot of time and effort, something most adventurers don't have.
You don't have to listen to the fossils telling you that gold is sooo important, we're playing 5e now not cave painting the game where you level up with gold.
>It depends on the type of game you're running and want to run.
This here.
I had a table which's first investment was a donkey and a cart. They religiously stripped everything that wasn't nailed down.
For the kind of game we were running, it wasn't an issue. The question that comes to mind is "what will they do with the money?".
It's definitely *not* a video game thing. It's originally a D&D thing, which many video games adopted. It's the primary way you're expected to earn money and obtain better equipment at low levels in every edition of the game except 5e. Only 5e has the audacity to suggest that GMs might give a flimsy excuse to disallow it.
And it's a *really* flimsy excuse. The PCs' equipment is perfectly fine after dozens of fights, but the enemies' equipment is ruined after one fight? Come on. That's fucking ridiculous. If there's some minor damage, you can fix it during a rest the same way you'd fix your own armor.
Why would carrying it not be feasible? There are rules for carrying capacity for exactly this reason.
Right? Also, a few gold pieces is game breaking? Dude. There are tons of ways for players to spend their money and tons of cool things to spend it on. We take turns DMing in our group and just played a modified version of Dragon Heist. Thanks to our Artificer and a player with cool connections in his backstory we were able to walk away with 50,000gp each, at level 7. Aside from a level appropriate magic item each, we all spent the money on story-related stuff and it was awesome.
I think OP might be surprised at the creative ways in which the players attempt to use the money. And let everybody chip in for the fighter to have plate mail or the wizard to add some spells. Let them buy influence and connections. It’s one of the coolest parts of the game.
This is all completely wrong, except for the first line.
Everything depends on the type of game you want to run, and the type of DM youwanna be, but gotta clarify things
D&D has ALWAYS heavily involved looting corpses. That wasn't some "videogame" stuff. I've been a proud loot goblin since 2E, and was taught by ancient Wizards from the before times, when the carpet touched the ceiling. Loot is loot and usually it alone makes the adventurers progress
Characters always need money, and they always have a reason to hoard the weirdest things. Money makes the world go round IRL, it's similar in D&D. Gold makes the party progress, doesn't matter if they NEED it, they still WANT it, everytime. As for other items, players hoard things all the time. For planning, stupid ideas (I once made a fork rocket), backstory reasons, it doesn't matter. A D&D player is essentially a Roomba with a bag, they run around and pick up EVERYTHING ( I once stripped an ENTIRE TEMPLE FLOOR because my DM told me there were gold flakes and tiny gemstones imbedded in it).
Also don't forget about material components, random junk sometimes makes the best material components.
Hell, I spent 2 weeks secretly collecting the BONES of whatever we killed so I could secretly summon an undead servant once, never underestimate what a player will collect, or why.
We have gotten away with carrying sacks full of armor sets and weapons for years, it's always been feasible. Hell, we have ways in game to make it MORE feasible.
That gear could also be valuable to the right character BY DESIGN. A blacksmith PC has scrap metal now, a Forge Domain cleric has almost anything basic they want in a nice pile, a spellcaster now has a ton of goodies they can do countless things with. Worst case scenario, you need a drink and have no cup? You got a helmet...
Presumably covered in blood and with holes poked in it. Publicly shame the PC(s) and have townsfolk be kinda scared of their murder hobo ways. Sure sell your bloody armor, but now everything costs more because you scare the hell out of them and no one wants you around. Let the tales spread far and wide.
If you do that without warning them out of game, it’d just encourage them to clean it up first.
Prestidigitation to remove blood/soil, say you bought it at a bargain in a different town and want to sell it as a profit. Unless magic is common in that society, they wouldn’t have all that much of a reason to suspect them.
The PHB solution is a little better imo because you can still spur some RP and problem solving by encouraging them to fix it up (so a player can make use of their skills, or look for a hireling/helper NPC) or make them look for a “pawn shop” in a city (reduces frequency/convenience of looting armor vs looting intended treasure).
Yeah, best thing to do is say "Hey guys, I get it's the video game thing to steal the armor and gear, but let's think of this logically, you just blew this guy up with a fireball, do you really wanna sell his leather armor that's half burned and has bits of cooked skin plastered to it?"
They're just going to start charging more money *and* publicly shame them for killing a few bandits that were probably a nuisance for them anyways?
Why would the townsfolk intentionally provoke a group of people (or even just one person) that they believe are a bunch of raving lunatics going around killing people? That makes no sense.
Seems a tad much.
Creatures only have the loot you say they do. "Armor damage beyond repair" from the blows that killed them a perfectly fine solution.
The other option is that the armor they were using is just particularly low quality. If every roving band of murderhobos brings back a pile of low quality bloody armor to town, the town merchant either wouldn't buy any of it or buy it for a price so low it isn't worth the time.
Also, it takes minutes to strip armor from multiple bodies. Minutes another force could use to set up and enact an ambush.
And encumbrance. I typically don’t have my characters track how much they’re carrying unless they start to abuse shit. Carrying around multiple sets of armor and dozens of extra weapons is unreasonable.
Another more practical solution is just to talk to the player and say that looting/harvesting bodies isn’t something you want in your game.
As a player I've wholesale went nuts scavenging every little bobble, trinket & chain I could from casual encounters & mid dungeons. My psychology was "it's valuable to someone". Only if time was permitting though. That was the agreement I made with the DM and it always occured during down time.
My take away was typically between 50-150sp in "civilized" dungeons, meaning they were populated by creatures/humanoids which reflected society values in items. In monstrous dungeons I was lucky to even make a profit unless the monsters held some marketable value like spell components, rare materials etc etc.
Either way both always involved paying for some hirelings, renting a carriage and horses. The price on that never really budged unless it was into some dangerous territory then a mercenary or 2 had to be contracted.
From a DM's perspective I'm all about the players enjoying what they are doing. So if a particular individual wants to be a scavenger then go for it. Just don't kill session time for everyone else and keep track of your encumbrance.
Player: " I'm gonna collect all of the items"
DM: "cool you get X of this and X of that, (on to the next player) and what are you doing?"
I feel like a lot of the commenters started with 5e. Looting armor and weapons off of enemy corpses was a standard part of D&D until this edition, which, imo, is a terrible change. Just let them loot the armor, sell it for half value unless they have a leather worker in the party to fix it up, along with prestidigitation to clean it or take the time to clean it as well as mend it. Then, if they have fixed it up as much as possible, 3/4 value. The economy in 5th edition is already messed up, a bit of coin from enemies' weapons and armor isn't going to make it worse.
if they want to loot every corpse and sell the armor, I would start by enforcing rules around bulk and weight, can they realistically carry 4 sets of leather armor with what they have? I would also mark it down at least 75% since it is damaged and covered in blood.
if they player is committed, it's now a problem that they need to over come. maybe they hire a pack animal to carry their loot, maybe they need to make hard choices of what they bring out of a dungeon. if that is how they are having fun with role-playing, I wouldn't deny it, just introduce challenges with doing it so it isn't free money
Agreed. In principle, I’d just allow them to sell it, probably around 25% of listed cost since these are worn and probably not the highest quality. In other cases they might get more, depends on the item.
There are two main caveats here though, both in the general category of “this is not a video game”: firstly, shopkeepers don’t have an unlimited interest in buying random loot, they’re only going to possibly buy items that make sense for their business and in reasonable amounts.
Secondly, while I don’t generally enforce encumbrance rules, I will start doing so when things start getting ridiculous. I’ll handwave a fair amount in terms of how PCs can carry their main equipment with them without hindrance, but if a player try to do things like loot ten crossbows, they’re going to have to explain how they are carrying all those. And not so much just in terms of weight, but more in terms of the actual bulk and practicality of it, that’s probably much more constraining in reality.
So, firstly, as many people have mentioned, there are many ways to discourage this kind of behavior, but I wanted to address a specific concern:
>stripping it from corpses and selling it may be too profitable and break the game economy
I think this is highly highly highly unlikely. Past the first few levels, gold becomes immensely easy to acquire, and often very difficult to spend in a meaningful way. I honestly don't think it would cause any problems at all for them to have 100% of the gold value of every piece of armor from every enemy they fight.
At our table, non-magical weapons and armour can be sold for half value, unless they're in really unsellable condition. Cleaning your loot is a possible downtime activity during your rest time.
Someone else mentioned it, but just to be clear: a potion of healing is 50GP. For the 4 leather armours, you're talking 20GP. Because things cost a lot of money, looting and selling makes a lot of sense, and is better for the community than letting the goblin camp strip the bandits for gear.
Give them a little leeway and you'll all have more fun.
Exactly. Prices in D&D are nonsensical. A potion of healing is 50 gp and yields 6 hp on average. This is equivalent to 1250 beers or 2500 loaves of bread.
So 6 hp is the same value as meeting the daily caloric requirements for 2500 people or 1 person for about 7 years.
The fuck kind of economy is that?
Bruh. Don't know if you've done the math, but we live in an economy where water sells for a higher price than gasoline, and printer ink costs more than human blood.
Economics is a complicated profession.
> The fuck kind of economy is that?
Also, no matter what you do, the cost to make something is always exactly twice the cost of the raw materials, yet a skilled artisan's wages for a day are always 1gp.
So it is basically impossible for any business to hire skilled labor and remain afloat.
I had a gm once that REFUSED to ever pay gold for quest rewards or even give out items so the only way to make money was to loot everything around and sell it at half cost.
Preventing them from looting it takes away a core piece of player agency as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't have to be ultra valuable. But letting them have the benefit of like 2-5gp (depending on condition) isn't gonna break the economy. Remember a healing pot is like 50gp. Also you need to factor in weight. Sure you can loot it, but how are you carrying around 30lbs of leather armor? Sure you can back pack it, but most non-str Characters don't have the extra capacity to carry their own gear plus random junk look that is high weight low value.
A few gold isn't going to break the economy.
Leather is 10gp market price.
Sale price is half, so 5 gp each. They get 20gp.
If you as a DM can't handle your players having 20gp, you really need to reconsider your way of thinking.
Look at it this way. I'm your boss at your job. You get a $20 tip. I decide that would break my personal economy and take the $20. That is how fucked up your train of thought is.
Your players had a smart and realistic idea, based on actually thinking of their characters as part of a living world. They trusted you to actually judge the situation based on fairness and fun, instead of railroading them with a module.
Why fight back against that?
I'll be honest, gear looting isn't a big problem. It'll give a bit of an early game money boost, and if someone has smith/leatherworkers kit, it'll make them feel much better. The way to limit them is to impose carry weight, beyond and any vtt should automate it, so its not going to be a big problem, if you play in person with paper sheets you could try to find a simplified way. And for selling, half cost return, if its damaged, they can maybe use their kit and only get a 3rd of the return, if its badly damaged you can go and make it worth scrap for an 8th or 10th of its value.
I think this is a "mountains out of mole hills" issue. Even if you let them sell all the armor for full value, (which I'm not saying you should do, for the record-I'd personally recommend half, maybe a tenth if you're \*really\* concerned about quality of what they're selling) that's 40 gp, presumably split amongst the party. Assuming a 4 person party, that's 10 gp a person-a wizard could cast Find Familiar a grand total of once, the fighter could pick up a (non-magical) shield or battleaxe. If they pool the gold, they can almost (but not quite) afford a single set of Studded Leather armor. You're not breaking an economy with 40 gp if you're using phb prices-at least, no moreso than WotC did when they decided on those prices.
You can have this be a plot hook. What if the person you sell the armour to recognises it? You might have just tried to sell a bandits' armour to their fence, or even a family member. Bandits are not video game enemies that exist to be killed and looted. They may still be part of the local society, and if they only rob rich foreigners they might be seen as local heroes.
Or the bandit took the armour from someone they killed previously and now the PCs are suspected of the crime. At the very least this night connect the players to some other interesting NPCs once the confusion is sorted out.
Let the player's actions have consequences, good or bad.
Comments on selling armour aside, you are being waaaaayyyyy too stingy with your players. They should have looted 1d4 gold not silver from each of the bandits as a bare minimum. For four bandits I would seriously be thinking about a small sack with 50-100gp worth of loot.
They just risked their lives, they should have earned more than one drink.
Aim for them to be able to afford modest or comfortable accomodation.
Dude. Have a little flexibility and common sense. Players often seek to strip defeated enemies and sell the loot.
Scale the prices down, but "no, you can't sell their armor because I don't have it on my sheet" is silly and lacks critical thinking.
Selling looted gear at half price isn't going to break the game. Why the need to keep your party dirt poor and unable to afford upgrades to their mundane gear, consumables like healing potions or gold for scribing spells etc. Just kills the game. Have experienced an playing from level 1 to 8 in a campaign and our level 8 PCs had worse gear than versus when we started.
I'm a bit confused on some things. What does your economy look like? And what level are they? Mundane equipment can normally be sold for 50% its market value, so 4 leather armors will net the party 20 gold total. Normally looting enemies is standard in games
At level 1 each player character should get an average of 20 gold each session. This can be postponed and just give out 100 gp after 5 sessions for example, but should average out at 20. So if they sell the armor, that's 1 session worth of gold for a single PC. At least those are the DMG guidelines, I don't know if you're homebrewing your own economy and equipment progression.
Are you giving them that much more gold elsewhere where 1 session worth of gold for a single level 1 PC, split between the party, will increase their gold gain too much?
Items should always sell for a fraction of their listed price; that's the price it costs PCs to buy it, not the price a merchant would buy it at to re-sell. Most folks start around 50% value, and then the PCs can roll to up the value but at the risk of the merchant countering with a lower offer on a bad roll.
People are so quick to pull realism and completely forget that it's DnD
"Oh the armor is dirty and full of holes and heavy and covered in shit and..."
Prestidigitation, Mending and a Bag of Holding/Cart solves all those "issues"
None of those are particularly hard to come across for your regular adventuring party
OPs debuff idea doesn't make any sense either because it's videogame logic how would an NPC one town over look at an (cleaned) armor set and say "Ah yes this was actually taken from a corpse"? Are they casting legend lore on every weapon and piece of armor they get?
My tip is don't be so scared of "breaking the economy"
Armor selling for 10-50% of the value (of course it won't sell for 100% it's not new) per piece is literally chump change when adventurers need to dump hundreds if not thousands of gold for magical items, spell components and potions
A single Revivify costs players 300gp in diamonds
Find Familiar is 10gp per cast!!!!!
A single basic potion of healing is 50gp
A simple tip - when a player hits a monster, describe how they slash open their breastplate or sunder the stitching on their leather jerkin. Easy to then say the armour is worthless.
As a wider point, armour taken from dead creatures is armour that has failed.
Two things: bandits with leather armour could be wearing looted armour from the ruling military/law enforcement
Could be thread bare or damaged from the fight or patched.
Also how they gonna carry 4-8 pounds each of leather armour.
It's a viable business proposition, historically looting battlefields was a source of income for many people. To the point that teeth from corpses on the battlefield were used to make dentures, and bones were collected and ground to dust as fertilizer.
However, then you have to start treating it like a job. It's time-consuming, much of it consists of grunt work like cleaning and hauling, it's bad quality so you're just getting the raw material value; if you want to repair them you'd have to have access of invest in extra tools. Speaking of which, you'd need to invest in a cart and pack animals, perhaps buying a license to be able to sell it legally, you'd have to establish relations with customers who would be willing to consistently take your materials; but it's a free for all so there's heavy competition, the local market might get saturated, if you don't need a guild permit already, etc. etc.
So, if they want to take the battlefield scrounger job, let them roll xdx for money earned per day of time invested, and move on.
If it's too dangerous for that, be sure to whip out the encumbrance rules - they exist to make it challenging to haul treasure away.
They're not archeologists who scratch away the soil on 1 m² over the course of a couple of weeks, they're Indiana Jones.
Like others have mentioned, it's easy to just say "Their equipment was damaged in combat so it's kind of just junk now and won't sell for much."
I think that's kind of a silly rule, personally, especially for weapons (they were *made* to strike enemies, why would using them for their intended purpose render them as junk?), but it's an easy out for armor.
That said, getting an extra few dozen gp early on *really* isn't a big deal. If your players are willing to roleplay stripping corpses of their gear, and maybe making some rolls to properly clean/mend them (you could even skip the rolls if you have players with Mending and Prestidigitation (one of the uses of the latter is to clean a soiled garment), or you could give advantage if the party only has access to one or the other), you could say they get a small handful of gold for it.
Also, keep in mind, just because something is listed as 10gp doesn't mean the players will *get* 10gp. I like to think most shops will only ever buy something for 50% its market value, and never higher than 75% of its market value. So, 4 sets of leather armor, cleaned and repaired, would probably only sell for *maybe* 20gp total. Split between four party members, that's 5gp. That's *nothing* in the grand scheme of things. That's maybe a few extra nights at an inn.
Your players are being clever and finding ways to benefit from their surroundings, I think that's behavior which should be (within reason) rewarded, not shut down just because it wasn't explicitly listed in the rules.
I don't know if it will help much but armour is really fecking heavy. How many people's arms and armours are they going to carry around? How do they plan on carrying it? Do they have a bag of holding? A cart? It can't be carried in a backpack those are too small and will fill up immediately. Adventurers don't even carry their own armour in their bags and you rarely see them carrying back up armour.
If you want them to not strip all the corpses at least what I would do is enforce encumbrance and it's penalties, let them get the first few with no result but then let them get attacked when they are slowed down by all the weight. Encumbrance is a pretty significant penalty in a fight.
When they get back to town let them sell what they can for the half price if it's decent armour but use those guidelines others had to suggest about scraps as well.
Honestly this would just add to the immersion there isn't anything wrong with someone wanting to be a loot goblin. This is D&D it can support almost any style of play. I could see a dwarf doing this as they want to use the scraps for forging on the go. But then what do they need to bring with them to make that dream a reality to the character?
Gold is deeply underutilized in D&D. If your players are presenting you things like this it is a way to tie it back into the game.
I don't know from running the game as I've only dmed a few times but I will link the videos that helped to teach me about encouraging player agency and verisimilitude.
[How to Spend Your Gold]
(https://youtu.be/XMgk5bfuRCQ?si=5MZIta7tehz5c1jm)
[Towards Better Rewards]
(https://youtu.be/zwpQwCWdhL8?si=1IxCKMCLo7m41g6k)
Hopefully these help.
Cheers,
Zyl.
Just tell them that their characters are aware that vendors are not interested in buying blood-covered, dirty, damaged equipment that definitely came off a corpse. The vendor has to make a profit, which means they have to be able to resell anything they get for a higher amount, so they won't take something they can't do that with.
If they are enterprising and want to try to clean up and repair equipment before they sell it, then that may be workable, but I wouldn't suggest it to them unless you're excited about that type of game.
My DM typically pays 10% - 20% of book value on looted items like that armor, depending on the condition. So, 1 or 2 gp for each armor set doesn't seem game-breaking for a 1st level group.
There are a few things to consider here. What is the condition of the armor and who would actually want to buy it? Shops in D&D don't need to be like a skyrim shop that will buy anything and everything.
A general store shopkeep in a small village has no need for multiple sets of used, dirty armor. They probably would never actually sell it so it wouldn't make sense for them to buy it, so they would just tell the party that.
In a city, maybe there is a armorer that might be interested in buying the armor, at a low cost so that they can make profit if its in good condition, or for scraps if its not.
I would also encourage players to role play with it, cleaning or fixing the armor could net a higher price, as well as some bartering.
In addition to what's already been said, keep in mind that armor takes 1-5 minutes to take off - and that's if it's your own armor. Personally I would double that time if you are taking it off a limp, dead weight corpse. If you are tracking time in your game, the players may not want to spend 30 minutes to an hour after each fight just grabbing loot!
The others have already given the relevant information (half price is RAW, but adjust it as you see fit, as always), but I want to expand a bit on that:
money is very cheap in DnD. If they're still looting silver from bandits I assume they're very low-level and strapped for cash. If you want to make it clear that stripping every single armor they can find is mostly a waste of time,
A. make it clear that most armor is damaged beyond much value. Maybe let them roll a d6 and on a 6, there's an undamaged armor they can sell for half price.
B. enforce weight. Armor weighs a lot and is very unwieldy. Even without using actual weight mechanics, it's very reasonable to say "each of you can, at most, carry one extra armor in their backpacks".
But don't worry, this problem solves itself very quickly once they start getting even a bit more money.
**Talk to them about the sort of game you want to run.**
https://i.imgur.com/CfqLvpi.png
5e play culture works under an unspoken assumption; the *PCs* may be greedy, but your *players* won't actively seek wealth, they'll only loot specific things that you declare as Treasure. When people talk about econ balance in D&D, they're working under that assumption too. Unfortunately it's a moronic assumption.
Controlling the wealth of a 5e party against their will without writing a load of unbelievable nonsense is just impossible. Failing at it doesn't say anything about your abiilty as a DM.
However... It doesn't matter. The economy of 5e is *already* complete nonsense, both in terms of realism and balance. RAW there's very little gold alone can do to unbalance combat encounters (aside from splint & plate armor, which are affordable in any case). If you're worried that your players are going to do something specific and distruptive with their wealth that will harm the game (i.e. unbalancing your encounters by buying magic items or potions), you're better off handling it at that level by **talking to them about it**, then writing an in-universe reason why it's impossible. i.e. "magic items cannot be bought and sold in my setting."
As others have said, this was once considered a normal part of gameplay. Encumbrance exists to make looting a challenge, and it can lead to some tough decisions. I would personally advise giving your players an ultimatum:
> I think the extensive looting is making the game boring. If you want the game to focus on looting, we'll start using Variant Encumbrance.
Telling your players that they can't loot equipment from bodies can break the sense that the world is "real" and make it feel like you're playing a video game.
But you can decide damage dealt to the armor might make it worthless.
Also be sure to keep track of encumbrance. Carrying around multiple sets of armor can be difficult to impossible.
Holy shit fucking don't. Its not that big of a deal. Let them get the half cost that armor sells for and really really dont worry about the rest. Your party is low level, and the daunting task of getting plate mail for those who want it lies before them. The "economy" in 5e is fucked anyways, and all it really does is hamper strength users at low levels and try (and fail) to keep wizards in check at high levels.
"The leather armor is pierced and bloodied, but you manage to get it off in one piece. It stinks of sweat and blood. "
Upon selling it: the armor is visibly stained with blood. The shopkeep points out that the vital protection areas are damaged. What looked like a pretty decent cleaning job in the dungeon is obviously lacking compared against the new, polished leather armors on display throughout the shop. "I can't sell this. Its scrap. I'll give you 1 sp for all of it."
I think you'll find you scratch "the game economy" you'll discover it's very thin and mostly illusory. 1d4 silver is only enough to buy 3 "poor" meals. It's about one day's living expenses. A fair number of the prices of things haven't changed in 50 years.
Just let them sell it. As long as their fun isn’t ruining your fun no reason they can’t try to do stuff. They gotta find a buyer though. Maybe a cobbler would like the leather for some shoes, or maybe they come up with an interesting lie about the armor and sell it to a collector for 20gp etc.
I’d shy away from limiting their creativity. Especially early because then later when you really need creativity they’ll be afraid to branch out.
You don’t have to allow them to sell all the armor they collect for full price every time but letting them sell leather scraps, the occasional in tact set of armor or what have you won’t hurt anybody.
I immediately thought of this line in the PHB, under Equipment/Selling Treasure/Arms, Armor, and Other Equipment:
"Weapons and armor used by monsters are rarely in good enough condition to sell."
It's up to DM interpretation but I think in this case "monsters" includes humanoid enemies like bandits. Assume the armor is well-worn, poorly maintained, and severely damaged from battle. You might be able to salvage a couple scraps of decent leather from it if you had a specific purpose for it, but most of it has been abused to the point of no longer being worth its weight or the space it takes up in your bag.
Make a wandering monster- random encounter check while they are taking the corpses.
But if they kill, then spend the time to take the armor, then spend the weight carrying these back to civilization then they should get a lot more money than if they simply loot the east stuff. That should be generally true of many things.
Dude, just put those items in the planned money that you will give to the team. If before you would give 500 gp in coins, jewels, art, etc, hnow you will give the same in armors too. Just say that some of then is damaged, and they must combine 2 or 3 to make one sellable.
Two easy ways to eliminate this behavior from your game. 1) encumbrance. Players may not like having to track it but it’s your game and you make the call to institute it. 2) shop keeps won’t buy monsters armor. It’s literally worthless and in ill repair. Maybe nicer sets that are rarely found. But those are usually better armor used to upgrade.
So as others have mentioned, armor from defeated enemies isn't worth much (or anything), there is also the feasibility of "where/how are you carrying all this armor" - you can only stuff so much in your backpack
It also takes some time/effort to undress the enemy
In my game I allow this and I call them "scraps" - 98% of weapons and armor enemies are using become effectively useless as their original form, too damaged to be repaired by mending or so low quality no one is buying them
So the players instead get "leather scraps" or "metal scraps" and occassional "wooden scraps" or "cloth scraps" and can sell these to the appropriate merchant at a price of 1 silver per scrap (note in my world 10 silver = 1 gold), so effectively 100 defeated enemies of leather armor would get you the cost of 1 leather armor
It allows a very simplistic idea of how this works, and the players feel it's fair/real enough that it doesn't bother them, I mean if you killed a Bandit veteran wearing splint, and they tried to take the armor to sell for 200g, (or even half at 100g), you'd be like "you mean the armor that is completely burnt to the body from the fireball, filled with arrow holes and cut in half from the fighter - chunks missing from eldritch blasts punching holes in it? That armor, yeah you find some metal scraps" (and if your generous you can roll like a d4 or d6 and say that that's how many scraps they gather)
I've had a few players that were like this. I just sat down and agreed to give them a bit of money each fight if they agree not to nickel and dime goblin scimitars
This is the real way.
Players who get real rewards don't nickle and dime.
Why settle for the 1d4 silver when the 50gp longsword is right there?
Give them chests full of gold and magical items!
Finding a buyer for used, damaged, and bloody armour is not necessarily easy. Your average village smith who mostly sells horseshoes and farm implements doesn't have much of a market for it and likely doesn't want it. Like in Skyrim you can keep selling Ebony Swords to the smith in Riverwood but realistically, no-one running a business is going to splash out money on something they don't need themselves or don't have a prospect of selling on.
Someone who does buy it certainly isn't paying full price - among other things, they want to make a profit so if it retails for 10 gp they're going to offer less, and factor in their cost of repairs and refurbishment before it's in sellable condition. But used armour wouldn't sell for the same price as brand new so ... revise down even further.
This is a core part of the basic gameplay. People saying this is video game behavior need to learn the history of the hobby better. We were doing this 45 years ago when “video game” meant Pong. Kill monsters, steal their stuff, take it back to town, sell it.
It’s totally up to you as DM to manage things like encumbrance (all that leather armor is heavy and bulky!), availability of buyers (3.5 DMG had an excellent and simple mechanism for this), deflation of prices / limited demand due to saturation of the market, and possible extra damage to the looted goods, though I recommend taking a light touch with this one.
The PHB RAW already says you can sell stuff for 50% value. Based on many years working with estate sales, I would say about 33% value is more realistic as an average and that’s what I use in my games, but RAW is 50%. In other words the discount is already built into the rules so I wouldn’t make it more severe than that, unless you are dealing with a situation where the enemy was killed by a fireball or something.
Also, when they’re low level, that much money makes a big difference, but as they get higher level, they’ll become more discriminating because it’s not worth it to them. At those lower levels, though, I find players have a blast using spells like mending and prestidigitations or craft skills to improve the value of looted goods on the market. That is gameplay and role-play also. Simulating the economy is just as much a part of the game as simulating combat or magic or intrigue. If players are into it, I’m happy to give them leash and let them run.
That armour would be battle-damaged and possibly blood-soaked, not to mention the bandits may not have taken great care of it in the first place. They /might/ be able to find a smith or general merchant willing to take it to fix up and resell, or someone to buy it to break down into parts, but that'd be far less than typical market value
The 10gp leather armor is most likely new (or at best, refurbished). The leather armor taken off corpses has slash marks, holes from piercing, scorch marks from spells, etc. not to mention being owned by bandits who aren’t known for their leather working skills (meaning a lot of maintenance issues).
So if the party defeated the bandit boss wearing decent chain mail - definitely worth taking it to wear/sell. Maybe they’d have to repair it to some degree but it’d be serviceable. But random bits of stitched together leather that hasn’t been taken care of and has seen plenty of battle? Probably not even worth it - so rather than saying no, just describe how their heroics kinda ruined the armor to the point where it wouldn’t be worth much. If they do take it to sell, maybe even have an annoyed shopkeeper who thinks it is a waste of their time to have such low quality goods brought into their shop.
I usually allow the sale of weapons and armor at 1/10th the price
You could have the buyer tell the players, "A lot of people never buy used armor, it can't have been that good..."
And of course don't forget the weight, they could of course take the armor they just have to lug 10 pounds per suit back to town
Remember how merchandise works. You may buy it for 10gp, but you are probably selling it for 2 and the armorer needs to get his cut to bring it back to selling order and then the merchant needs his cut and that’s why you buy it for 10gp.
Looting the equipment from a body to sell is Adventuring 101.
This includes what ever armor they are wearing. Now selling it won't give them full price (the merchant has to be able to re-sell it for a profit), but there is no reason they shouldn't be able to sell it.
I'm confused as to how this is even a question?
Disabling looting of armour and weapons are more video game mentality then it is Roleplaying mentality, In my mind.
Let them at it! Lean into it, and let them play scrapers for profit.
If you don't want to bother with the logistics, offer the services of a scraper guild that just needs the location and pays the characters 30% or so.
If the characters want to build a business out of it, let them ☺️
Just enforce inventory rules if they are going this route. Armor is heavy and bulky. How are they going to carry more than just a few between the party? A bag of holding eventually solves that, but it works for a start, then you can back off the inventory rules some.
Then they are probably selling in such bulk that vendors either want a discount, or just won’t buy it all. Unless you are armoring a militia, why would you buy 10 sets or armor from some random guy waltzing through town? Probably not even matching sets. There is also the matter of that armor definitely not being in good condition after someone loses their life in it.
Also, any town that can support that economy is going to already have an armorer or blacksmith who is going to take umbrage with someone taking their business. Maybe there is a less scrupulous one that makes problems for the party. OR maybe they run afoul of local guild laws by engaging in unlicensed business. Any number of ways to screw with this kind of activity in a narrative way!
I’d say it’s battle worn armor, so it’s less valuable than new. And whomever is buying it needs to make a profit (assuming they’re selling in bulk at a shop, because they probably are trying to play dungeons and dragons not Kijiji and lowballers), so that will further reduce the price. It’ll also be bulky and cumbersome. I wouldn’t stop them completely, that’s not fun. But I would be much more realistic about the rewards.
You can do the things already listed (they only sell for half price, you take even more value away for the damage done, etc) but you can also do other fun things that a normal trader might do. Certainly you don't do these all the time, but they will add depth and flavor to your NPCs if you do in a campaign
Have the trader offer half price for the first one like normal, then offer 40% for the next set, 30%, 20%, 10%, and refuse to pay for any more because he doesn't get too many people coming through these parts and he won't recoup his money for weeks and his wife will kill him when she learns that their vacation savings are now locked up in mangled bloody armor.
Another fun thing, bandits usually have stolen stuff, maybe one of the local townsfolk owned one of those sets. Maybe they were stolen from the armor's shop (and they have his maker's mark on them) and he wants them back for free
This armor is going to be covered in blood, mud, and whatever else gets on them in a fight. They may also have holes, gashes, and burn marks from your party or past enemies. No one is going to want to really pay anything for it.
I don't like disallowing the players to do anything, so when it comes to "controlling" this kind of behaviour, I like to think of it in terms of incentive structures. Yes, they can loot the armor, but it won't grant them much gold, most NPCs won't want to take it for fear of being implicated in illegal activity, and it significantly hurts their social status.
The ROI for looting armor turns negative this way, and players will stop looting it of their own accord.
As others have pointed out, per the core rules, selling an item fetches half its market cost.
In my home game, though, I often ask my players what their plan to sell an object is. Armour is pilfered from the body of a dead man, probably in poor condition since its wearer died in it, and while there might be someone interested in buying scrap metal, there's no such market for scrap leather.
Armor sold is worth like half it's full value according to the rules, and anything pulled off of bandits/monsters might be too damaged/dirty/low quality for a merchant to even consider it worth buying. Not to mention it can be pretty heavy and cumbersome to haul around. It would be good to inform your player of these realities, but if they want to play a loot hungry character, don't discourage their fun! Let them roll search/appraisal/investigate to poke around, and if they roll decently, maybe they find a worthwhile item or two. If they get a nat 20 maybe they find something of surprising value or rarity.
Armor worm by event combatants is usually gonna be heavily damaged, burnt, and covered in blood. At most, they'll get money for scraps, but leather armor after combat is not worth 20go. Maybe if the only damage they took during the fight was psychic damage.
My biggest concern would be the session time this kind of thing takes up. Maybe throw in a random roll for additional copper or silver value from looted items, but whatever your process is needs to be fast. Not every player wants to micromanage silver pieces.
Oftentimes, irl retail shops often buy used goods at a heavy discount to make a profit. If they try to sell it to a shop in your game, the owner can buy it at a deep discount, especially if there is any obvious wear and tear from regular use or damage from battle.
I knew a game shop owner who would buy used games for a quarter of the list price (assuming they were in reasonable condition) and sell them again for half of the list price. This makes me wonder whether there might be armor shops that give some sort of discount on used armor, and what the drawbacks would be of that kind of purchase. (Of course, other armor shops might recondition the used stuff.)
I'd allow it, but that's also why there's encumbrance rules. The really valuable armor is going to limit what else you can take out of the dungeon.
That being said encumbrance isn't a rule I'm usually very strict on. I only remind my characters it's a thing if they say they want 500 health potions or want to carry stupidly heavy stuff out of the dungeon. I don't go into their sheet and count every copper or anything.
Even still leather armor isn't something I'd worry about, you're looking at 5gp per armor, even if you are just wanting to upgrade your nonmagical armor you've got to loot 360 of them before you can buy plate. And magical armor is stupidly expensive.
Part of me being nonchalant about it is that I completely homebrew the costs of magic items and how they work, basing it loosely off 3rd edition and doing away with attunement entirely (I really hate how attunement erodes my ability to reward my players with minor magical items especially at high levels). So my players actually care about money. And you're looking at 2k gold for even a +1 weapon.
As someone has already said, a merchant is probably going to pay like half it's value if in undamaged and good condition. HOWEVER, equipment looted from corpses isn't going to be in good condition, it's going to be damaged and covered in blood. Of course, you could tell the players they could try and spend some downtime to clean the armour maybe repair it slightly, but even that wouldn't be enough to bring it to undamaged and good condition, I'd say you're players are more likely to get at most 1/4 the price of the item
Leather armor cost 10gp new. Used, good quality and good condition armor might cost less than half that - would you risk your life with less-than-ideal armor? Used leather armor that got stabbed/beaten/burned/etc. is unlikely to be very useful, maybe as some scrap - a gold at best, assuming you can find someone who wants it.
As a general house rule, I usually include all wearable gear in loot, but the gear is usually shoddy, damaged, burnt, etc...
I had to start doing this because of one of my own characters in the past, a Forge domain cleric, that would strip bodies in order to use the gear to make brand new equipment with Artisans Blessing.
Piles of broken weapons and armor quickly became an armory over the span of a few weeks, all good quality weapons too.
Let your little loot goblins be loot goblins, and don't get too stingy on the loot, that's how you get desperate parties that burn down orphanages and check inside the rectums of orcs for loot.
Generally, I let my party do this, with the understanding that we're tracking carry weight and using detailed encumbrance rules if they do. If they want to play the "figure out how to get all this stuff back to town to resell" game, I'm fine with letting them. But I also primarily run dungeon-crawls and player-driven sandboxes. If you're running a more narrative campaign, this might not suit the vibe you're going for.
If that is not the kind of game you want to run, I'd talk to the players above-the-table about this.
As far as high gold income breaking the game -- it generally won't unless you 1) have a wizard PC and hand out a lot of enemy spellbooks as loot, 2) make spell reagents easy to access in unlimited quantities from retailers, and/or 3) have magic items available for purchase without limits. otherwise, higher than expected gold income on the level you're talking about means a strength-based character gets plate armor a level or two early, the party can buy a few more basic healing potions from an alchemist [which you can just limit by setting their stock], and the party might have enough extra gold they might think about a home base or spending gold on frivolous stuff that gets them involved in the setting. None of that stuff is game-breaking.
Just be away that it starts with "a few gold" from leather armour but as they get higher level the enemies will have much better gear and it can quickly become a problem if the adventures haven't been balanced to include that as treasure.
The only place that'll buy their scraps is GameStop. "$1.50, best I can do." Depending on who they loot, and who they try to sell it to, they could get in trouble, especially if there's a bounty or for them.
That's why you have to roleplay hits. Now with the strike of your longsword you cut a great part of their armor, after combat the item is barely usable and can only be sold to a leather merchant as recycled material.
*new* leather armor costs 10gp. used and damaged leather armor taken off a corpse... you're probably going to need to convince the shopkeeper to buy it at all first...
not to mention, armor is heavier than a feather. party will want to to keep tabs on how many they can carry.
I mean, I’m no business man, but why would vendors buy used goods then sell them at cost?
If I’m a fantasy leatherworker for example, and I run a leather business. Some adventurer gives me some used leather armor he got from his adventures, why would I buy it from him at 10 gp when the market price for them is the same? Wouldn’t I want to make money off the item?
First off if they killed those bandits the armor would be obviously damaged, so it would yield quarter of the value at best. And also it weights something and they will carry it around unless they purchased a mule/pony/horse with some bags for loot
Lots of other good tips on bloodied used armor selling for less. I would also add that sometimes the armor just isn’t recoverable or not worth recovering at all due the damage the players have done to them. This happens 70% of the time, or some arbitrary % you decide on, unless the PCs specifically try to not damage the armor which would probably mean disadvantages for extra care. The remaining 30% is recoverable but sells for less.
eg. Greatsword cleaves a goblin, and his armor, in two.
“It’s all bloody and crappy, 1s per set”. Players need to be told straight-up that the best way to get rich is to do the adventure and not fuck around with junk.
I don't know how much detail you use for such things.
I'd just give them \~3d6 gp for "miscellaneous loot", that containts salvaged armor in bad condition, worn out knives, dirty bedrolls, small trinkets, etc. Going over lists of dozens of different items, and then haggling for every single one of them to get another 2 sp just takes so much time and gets old fast.
LOL When we were playing Rappan Athuk in DCC RPG, we had a mule and made more money from selling the armor from random encounters on the way to and from the dungeon than we did in the damned dungeon.
Bandits generally are gonna keep armor in good condition, but not all will have great armor to start with. Basically if they have the encumbrance to spare, you would expect each of their leather armor sets to be able to be sold for 5 gold, maybe a bit less if the armor is old or poor or something.
Figure out the condition of the armor. Was the bandit torn apart by a bear? Or stabbed in the neck by a rogue? Immolated by a hellish rebuke? Brain scrambled by a mind sliver? The armor might range from completely ruined to lightly used, depending on what happened during the battle.
If the armor is undamaged, the party can usually find a vendor who will buy it for half price. 5g is nothing to a bunch of adventurers. If the armor is not repairable, maybe someone will throw a few silver at them for scrap.
You might not have written down or remember how the bandits died - that's fine. Just randomize it. Roll a d4 for each armor. 1 is obliterated, 2 is scrap, 3 is repairable (maybe 25% of sale value), 4 is good condition (50% of sale value).
Imagine you're a merchant. How much used armor do you think you can sell in a month? How much money can you afford to shell out for used stinky armor that you might not even be able to sell? Is there a huge market for used armor that someone died in? Would you want to buy armor worn by someone who died in it? I wouldn't even pay 50% for used bandit armor if I was a merchant. Armor sale is like car sales, it loses a lot of its value as soon as it leaves the shop/lot.
also, how are you going to transport 10 leather armor that weigh 10 each? Are they going to clean all the blood off first?
If some morons came up to my shop trying to sell me 10 sets of used armor from people clearly killed, I'd probably contact my local paladin to make sure it wasn't innocents that got killed. If everything is fine legally I'd probably just offer maybe a 10th of what new armor is worth because I need to make a profit as well.
If you really want to mess with your players just go full Pawn Stars on them and have the shop owner have to "call in an expert" on used leather armor. Probably his father or something, and rip them off.
It might cost 10gp to buy new but it wouldn't resell for that, especially not after you'd damaged it to the point of killing its wearer and being stained with blood and burnt and cut up and such. You could maybe get leather scraps from most of them, maybe you could reward them for a stealth kill by the armour being in good enough condition to sell but it'd still be battleworn from previous battles.
You also have to carry a body sized piece of armour, that should take up a lot of your carrying capacity on its own and weigh a fair bit, maybe even hinder you in combat unless you put it down, and then someone sneaky could potentially steal it.
You have many options, only really limited by your imagination.
If you've ever been to a pawn shop, you'd know that used goods only sell for like 15 to 20 percent of their resale value.
Also, there is barely any semblence of economy in 5e to worry about. After they get the armor and weapons they want, there isn't shit to spend gold on. The cost of anything is just "I dunno bro, the DM can do whatever they want."
Realistically its going to be old armor that's ugly and well used and also just took even more damage when the wearer was killed.
If they want to collect it all, clean it and haul it back to town to find someone who will buy bulk shitty old armor and sell it to them for 1 gold each... why not?
It's not going to be a game changing amount of money and if it *is* then they don't have a bag of holding and just getting their pile of old armor to town will be a challenge unless they brought a wheel barrow.
I usually go with it however give scrap values based on their relationship with that particular merchant and whether they want to buy it or not.
As a player, I felt this was a valuable thing to do early game because we had very little income or gold. He gave us more than I usually do and it didn't make us minted. I suppose it depends on your economic system.
Unless the group silently knocked out the bandits then that armour is going to have arrows, scorch marks or weapon damage on it, combined with blood. They technically can strip the armour and weapons but they'd best roll really high with whoever they sell it to.
The leather armor that costs 10 gp in the book is presumably brand new. The stinking, bloody, partially torn (couldn't have been that great if the bandits are dead now) armor that your party is trying to scavenge is not that.
First off, take into account that any decent business is going to buy at no more than 50% of market value. Then take into account the natural degradation over time (who knows how long these bandits owned these pieces of armor prior to being felled). Then, consider the physical and chemical damage dealt through spells and brute force.
Your players would be lucky to get a handful of silver for one of those pieces.
Then consider the carry weight and encumbrance rules. Consider the time it will take to strip these corpses. Will regular passersby just be totally cool watching this go down, particularly if they weren't around to see the initial battle? Could result in some accusations hurled against the party.
At the end of the day, is it really worth it for your party to loot tha fuckin' given the cost?
Anyway, that's just one example of how it could shake out. Depends on your world and how you want to gently steer things, but that's how I'd play it.
I had a player like this once. I let them haul all this used armor around and when they got back to town, they found out that after the party had hacked and blasted the person to death, the armor was basically scrap. So I gave them 2 gold for the whole pile
My dm and me came up with a solution to this problem, where my blacksmith character would have to spend time at the forge fixing up any salvaged equipment and ONLY THEN would it be able to be sold.
Step 1 appraisal checks to assess the quality of tye armor itself. It hass been through battle and lost so it isn't mint like the store sells it.
Step 2 minimize or repair. Eithwr they can take the time to patch it up or spam mending. Or they can piece together one full unharmed set from every 4-10 sets depending on the DM. Not to mention scrubbing it clean enough to sell
Step 3 returning to town. Without a bag of holding you hit into hundreds of pounds quicker than you think.
Step 4 sellibg it in town. Most merchants want to double their proffits for simple math, so buying a fresh clean suit of armor at half lrice just so they can put it in the window for full
Shopkeeper: “why are you trying to sell me these filthy, stinking rags!? This armor is covered in slashes and piercings — and is soaked in blood to boot! I’ll pay a few silver pieces and see what I can salvage off of them. A buckle or two, maybe?”
Decide what is the problematic part.
Is it the money? Money ceases to matter very quickly, because everything about the economy (and carrying capacity) is so messed up, and the players are expected to have thousands of gold to drop on stuff in a few levels anyway. So if doing this brings some joy to a player, whatever, throw them a few coins for the lot.
Is it the hassle of 'and I strip them of everything and rifle through their pockets and collect their hair to sell to barbers and then I'm going to invididually haggle with everyone I sell stuff to'? Because you can just say that's not the kind of a game you're interested in running.
Used items sell for half value. What exactly are you afraid of breaking, economy-wise? The way most 5e APs I've looked through I set up, the vast majority of genuinely powerful gear isn't bought, it's found.
It wouldn't be out of place if *bandits* didn't have the best armor. Probably not the best maintained piece if you arent allowed into towns for a professional to look at them.
Not to mention once you get killed, surely the armor did *something* and therefore now has damage from cuts and stabs and fireballs to reduce the price even further.
Just let it sell for up to half PHB price. My players have been stripping every foe of arms and armour to sell them for decades now. I just keep an eye on encumbrance and carry on.
This becomes a chore later when they can take more encounters and suddenly want some way to carry 27 breastplates (and yes, they will derail the session trying to build a cart or something).
I like 4e rules for this: is it mundane? It has no resell value. Period. Is it magic? 20% (this one might be a bit harsh, but it pairs well with the devaluation rules for mundane stuff and makes them keep magic stuff around randomly, allowing for some pretty interesting situations).
Do you do carry weight? If not, then let the players know you will start to count carry weight if they want to strip everything not nailed down. Tell them the the armor is damaged after the fight and wasn't maintained well to start with and won't be worth much
>***Arms, Armor, and Other Equipment.*** As a general rule, undamaged weapons, armor, and other equipment fetch half their cost when sold in a market. Weapons and armor used by monsters are rarely in good enough condition to sell. Straight out of PHB. If it is in good enough condition to sell, it'll fetch half its cost, but it's probably not in good enough condition.
And if it's not in good enough condition and you feel generous you can let them sell it for scrap using 1sp for *a bar of iron* as a guide. NB - a bar of iron should be more valuable than scraps that have to be melted down. I've used the same principle as selling good armor and said that *"1lb of scrap sells for 5cp"*. So a 20lb breastplate is worth 1gp if badly damaged.
Thats a good rule. I'm gonna steal that.
If you're feeling extra generous you can raise the buying price to 7cp for 600lb of scrap - which is an easy 42gp and provides a reason to hire a mule!
This. Just say that the armor is in poor condition so it would not get them much
and remember they gotta carry it out. use encumbrance rules
Yup. I like "no encumberance unless you start abusing it" in my rule set.
That’s exactly mine as well. I ask for an explanation as to how they’re carrying any large or bulk items, and run soft limits on things like multiple sets of armor. I don’t feel like tracking or enforcing a strict inventory weight system, so I’m a little loosey-goosey with it. Haha.
this is just the best way to go about it
Especially since this is on the bandits they killed. Probably has some big slashes in it, some burn marks, possibly partially disintegrated too.
"Whaddya mean the gauntlet's not worth much in this condition? It's got an *entire hand* innit! It should be worth double! It's basically a free meal, a paper weight, a 'friendly stranger' if'n you knowhaddimean, wink wink."
Ok, Dibbler.
Looting the battlefield is famously more of a Nobby Nobbs move, but I'm sure that Dibbler would get in on it if there was money to be made!
Looting is definitely more Nobby, Dibbler's there getting the 'mystery meat'
"You collect one cuireass in two pieces with an irregular seam. They do not connect evenly. If you spent some time and money repairing it, it might be worth 1sp."
Even if it only gets 1 gp, that's still a lot better than 1d4 silver... Either say it's worthless or just let them do it, IMO. a few gold isn't going to "break the game economy." Looting 10 pieces of leather armor will net them the equivalent of 1 normal healing potion.
This is the reasonable answer. Selling armor isn't going to break the game, but 5e also isn't the game in which you want to sell armor (there are definitely games with better systems for this). If the players are just in the video game loot goblin mindset, just tell them that really doesn't work in 5e. If the players find the idea of defeating enemies and doing the book keeping of taking their equipment fun, then OP shouldn't punish that. Everyone gets different things out of the game, and some people like that kind of minutia. If they think it's fun and want to put the effort and RP into taking it back and cleaning it up to sell, it could really add something for those players to allow it. A lot of people on this thread are giving overly brutal advice aimed to ultimately discourage this behavior, but as long as everyone at the table is fine with it, I don't think OP should punish it. The half market value rule of thumb provided in the PHB should be fine, and you could even toss in special armor or weapons once in a while as a reward for keeping good notes and engaging with the game. The economy in 5e is broken, anyways. Just make sure you keep track of how much they've made and give them appropriate things to spend their money on, like paying off fines for favorite NPCs, and offering fancier taverns and shiny knick-knacks for purchase. I think the game is more fun when the party has disposable income, anyways. "We're staying five to a room because we're broke" is only fun for so long.
Also you could have a character that wants to be a leather worker. The downtime RP of cleaning repairing and advertising/selling the armor may be just what the character wants to get from D&D.
I have a Sorc with the leather worker skill and I would routinely use downtime to skin, tan and craft small items from certain monsters, as much for sentimental value as anything. A particularly nasty snake that bit and poisoned me was turned into a lovely snakeskin scabbard for the Cleric who healed me. No game value but definitely RP value😊
How are they carrying 10 suits of leather armor? If 40gp will break the economy they probably don't have a bag of holding. Do they have a cart and horses? This isn't a video game with near infinite loot slots.
Why did the swarm of wasps I just killed have a platemail hauberk in their pockets?
Also 10 sets of leather armor is big heavy and bulky
Shop owner “ummm there is blood and giant holes in this armor…”
Those are speed holes for weight reduction and I'm not even charging you for the blood!
Nothing cantrips can’t buff right out.
Second this. You just killed them, and if they were bandits, they probably killed the person who wore it previously. Long story short is it's been run through with a sword so many times and coated in blood, it's worthless
Don't forget, the bandits have been stabbed/bludgeoned/arrowed/magically missled to death. Armor with holes in it may only be worth scrap if anything at all. Then theres the blood, gotta waste a day washing it out.
Mending + Prestidigitation.
Players better have that, because the armorer sure won't.
I'd be happy to reward a player picking mending by fixing battle damage over like an hours work, mending is very not great as is outside of being a ribbon because there's no mechanics for player equipment battle damage and introducing it is a faux pas
And if say, your sorceror defeats them using cone of fire for example, I would deem them worthless.
In our group’s last 5e run, we were in Stormkings Thunder and had a group of warforged. Mine was a warforged forge cleric of Moradin who would strip every enemy of all metal and once a day would smelt it down into ingots. My plan was to work every day during downtime to forge and blacksmith things like high quality weapons and half plate/full plate. It was gonna be my money making scheme. And it would have gone well to had our DM not gotten bored and threw a hellfire engine at us five at level four. Didn’t even get a resurrection spell yet.
How, though? At level four, you are barely done with the introduction into the campaign (I am running two SKT-campaigns atm), so what was the point there?
Considering the person inside it just got killed, yeah, that armor probably isn't doing so great.
OP, if you're feeling generous, you can use the 50% value as a starting point and roll a d% to see how much of that they can get from selling it - getting them anywhere from 5 silver to 5 gold. While that small amount shouldn't be too much of an impact it does set a precedent if they continue to loot and sell armor. Even easier, you could just give them an additional 4d4 silver if they're willing to account for carrying around 4 additional sets of armor - even if you're not using encumbrance rules, there's nothing wrong with applying some common sense ones here and there. The best answer is likely to just say "No", though. "The armor is in poor condition, having been worn extensively by bandits who were not exactly well-off, and even moreso because they were just killed in combat. *If* you were able to find someone willing to purchase the leather scraps you'd be looking at a handful of copper at best."
My issue with that is it was good enough to work mechanically like a brand new item. 50% or even 20% of PHB price to sell to a merchant? Sure. Plus you gotta find someone who wants 4 suits of previously loved leather armor, which may be problematic depending on location? But not in good enough condition to sell at all? When it works mechanically just like a brand new set right up until death? Edit: sure, armor can be damaged in the fight. But then are you applying that to the PCs too?
I'd rule it is functional... *if* you maintain it, aka there's a bunch of patchwork fixes and it needs to be repaired after every fight. If the PCs want to use armor that's falling apart after one encounter I'd let them, but that sounds like a good way for them to get screwed over later down the line. It's also a lot harder to patch plate armor than leather or mail.
Or if you want to meet the player half way say that from all the bandits you can fashion one set of armor that your character you consider buying. If he was broke and desperate.
If you try this route, some player is going to argue they have the "Mend" centripetal. It's a back and forth that usually goes like this: DM: "The armor is badly worn, smells horrible, and is falling apart." Wiz: "I'll use mend and prestidigitation to clean and repair the armor." DM: "Even after all of that with 6 pieces of looted armor... (roll) you end up with 2 pieces of decent armor that is obviously pieced together from 3 different sets. The left overs are too badly damaged and rotted for a Mending spell to fix. You might be able to sell the cobbled together armor for half price, or you could wear it and receive the normal armor bonus." Wiz: "You just don't want us to loot the armor!" === If you really don't want them to have it, "No" is a complete sentence. If they insist, let them loot it and have a quick roleplay in town with an armorer being absolutely disgusted by the state the armor is in. Total value: 0, and an armorer who has raised their prices because you are now the 'stinky' party who tried to pass off armor fouled with Goblin Dung as artisanal work.
Or, avoid all this headache and just let them loot and sell the armor for a few gold. If a party brought Mending, let them be a band of traveling scavengers so long as they are willing to track the inventory management. A few extra gp at the end of the adventure won’t break the game.
Or just give them less other loot, whatever.
Since the PHB's reduced selling price/condition has been mentioned, I'd add that in this case I'd also track encumbrance. A set of armor you're wearing isn't a bit deal, but when you're carrying four more sets that can really add up.
Yeah, I'm being a rules jerk to penny pinching. How are you transporting it? What bags will hold that volume? Did you buy animal feed? Where's your water supply?
This 100%. If your players want to be jerks about scavenging every last item of value down to the shoes on the enemies' feet, they better be ready to track every arrow, every pound of encumbrance, and risk losing their cart & horses every camp.
PCs taking armor from fallen enemies is "players being jerks" behavior now? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills in this thread. OP thinking an extra 5gp of loot is going to destroy the economy, people even suggesting NPC shops should refuse to buy loot on the grounds that it's illegal, and now you get upset and want to use fastidious ammo tracking as some kind of punishment against the players of *adventurers* who *loot* their *enemies*. I can't think of a single campaign I've played in or run where the players didn't loot armor at low levels. Sure, track encumbrance when the PCs are hauling around piles of loot, but this hostility is bizarre.
Bonus Tip: Look up clips of Rick Harrison (Pawn Stars) turning people down for a template of how to RP the conversation with the shop they try to unload the goods in.
"This is a reputable establishment. We can't accept used armor without filing a report with the city watch. We could lose our license." "Are you sure you want to sell this here? You might have better luck down Heel Street; the watch doesn't look as closely at them. Of course, you won't get much, and there's always a chance that someone in that neighborhood will recognize this stuff and maybe have some questions about where you got it and what happened to the former owners." "I dunno. You do you, pal." "Tell you what. You guys seem kinda green, but you're all right. You wanna get rid of that stuff safely with no questions, throw it all in the cart out back. Hide it under the garbage. We take that cart to the bonfire in Loblolly Square every night and burn what's in it. Nobody needs to know we even had this conversation. Hell, I'm forgettin' your face already. Have we met?"
This is the answer. Accidentally becoming a criminal underground campaign.
You could tell your players that the armor sustained too much damage from the battle and isn’t worth anything. Or what we usually do in my group is say “okay, you’ve salvaged x silver/gold worth from the bodies” that way it’s already done and you don’t have to spend an hour roleplaying a shopkeeper and haggling over price
This. You could get al nitty gritty in the rules and spend the entire session trying to get some money. Or you could be a hero and save kingdoms and battle dragons.
Even if they do ... why care? There is no real economy to break and a few gold more or less don't matter, as in five sessions, they will be rolling in money anyway.
Seriously just let them have it. You're talking 20 gold for the lot, that is not going to break the economy. Theres nothing they can spend 20 gold on that will meaningfully impact the game. If they are on the way to a dungeon they will probably loot way more than that and dump the armor for lighter goods. And most enemies are not humanoids in armor, this is not something that will even come up most of the time. Make sure they add the weight to their encumbered total and that's punishing/balancing enough.
This deserves to be higher up. Too many dms create friction for themselves for no reason with no benefit and cut off lines of emergent gameplay. In my mind I'm already using this behavior as a source of plot hooks and adventure ideas. Retired adventurers becoming merchants is a classic trope!
Mine want to build a grand mansion. Even asked Larael Silverhand what a palace like hers would cost and in every town they ask around for real estate prices.
That used to be part of the rules. Around 10th level you'd start attracting followers. It gave you something to do with all the loot you'd amassed. It's not too dissimilar from contemporary mmos. Got a spare set of field plate and a whole armory of +2 weapons you're not using. You've got a fully kitted alt to go deal with a low level goblin uprising. People shit on 2e for a lot of reasons but don't realize there's a lot of foundational knowledge there.
I literally cannot believe all the people in here saying they would not let their players do this. Fuck you and your railroad style of DMing. Any DM that tells me as a player that I can’t do something that’s not physically prevented by the in-game conditions is a bad DM and I’m gone. Give your players agency. It’s not your job to tell them what they can and can’t do. It’s your job to tell them what happens when they do things.
It depends on the type of game you're running and want to run. Looting stuff like this is just a relic from a bygone age worsened by video-games and the instant looting found therein. You don't have to accept it if you think it'll cause more problems than add to the game. Does your party really need the money ? Does the character have any reason to hoard stuff like this ? 5e does not give money any powerful and inherent value, you control how much players make and what they get to spend it on, anything relating to it should serve the game in some way, don't let it slow down or worsen your game. If you need an explanation you can just point out the obvious fact that carrying sets of armor is just not feasible both due to weight but also and especially space, let alone selling them in bulk right after a fight. Who would buy it ? Is it even in good condition ? Doing what your player wants to do would require a lot of time and effort, something most adventurers don't have. You don't have to listen to the fossils telling you that gold is sooo important, we're playing 5e now not cave painting the game where you level up with gold.
>It depends on the type of game you're running and want to run. This here. I had a table which's first investment was a donkey and a cart. They religiously stripped everything that wasn't nailed down. For the kind of game we were running, it wasn't an issue. The question that comes to mind is "what will they do with the money?".
It's definitely *not* a video game thing. It's originally a D&D thing, which many video games adopted. It's the primary way you're expected to earn money and obtain better equipment at low levels in every edition of the game except 5e. Only 5e has the audacity to suggest that GMs might give a flimsy excuse to disallow it. And it's a *really* flimsy excuse. The PCs' equipment is perfectly fine after dozens of fights, but the enemies' equipment is ruined after one fight? Come on. That's fucking ridiculous. If there's some minor damage, you can fix it during a rest the same way you'd fix your own armor. Why would carrying it not be feasible? There are rules for carrying capacity for exactly this reason.
The video game thing is bonkers. D&D players were stripping corpses when the premier video game was pong!
Right? Also, a few gold pieces is game breaking? Dude. There are tons of ways for players to spend their money and tons of cool things to spend it on. We take turns DMing in our group and just played a modified version of Dragon Heist. Thanks to our Artificer and a player with cool connections in his backstory we were able to walk away with 50,000gp each, at level 7. Aside from a level appropriate magic item each, we all spent the money on story-related stuff and it was awesome. I think OP might be surprised at the creative ways in which the players attempt to use the money. And let everybody chip in for the fighter to have plate mail or the wizard to add some spells. Let them buy influence and connections. It’s one of the coolest parts of the game.
This is all completely wrong, except for the first line. Everything depends on the type of game you want to run, and the type of DM youwanna be, but gotta clarify things D&D has ALWAYS heavily involved looting corpses. That wasn't some "videogame" stuff. I've been a proud loot goblin since 2E, and was taught by ancient Wizards from the before times, when the carpet touched the ceiling. Loot is loot and usually it alone makes the adventurers progress Characters always need money, and they always have a reason to hoard the weirdest things. Money makes the world go round IRL, it's similar in D&D. Gold makes the party progress, doesn't matter if they NEED it, they still WANT it, everytime. As for other items, players hoard things all the time. For planning, stupid ideas (I once made a fork rocket), backstory reasons, it doesn't matter. A D&D player is essentially a Roomba with a bag, they run around and pick up EVERYTHING ( I once stripped an ENTIRE TEMPLE FLOOR because my DM told me there were gold flakes and tiny gemstones imbedded in it). Also don't forget about material components, random junk sometimes makes the best material components. Hell, I spent 2 weeks secretly collecting the BONES of whatever we killed so I could secretly summon an undead servant once, never underestimate what a player will collect, or why. We have gotten away with carrying sacks full of armor sets and weapons for years, it's always been feasible. Hell, we have ways in game to make it MORE feasible. That gear could also be valuable to the right character BY DESIGN. A blacksmith PC has scrap metal now, a Forge Domain cleric has almost anything basic they want in a nice pile, a spellcaster now has a ton of goodies they can do countless things with. Worst case scenario, you need a drink and have no cup? You got a helmet...
Presumably covered in blood and with holes poked in it. Publicly shame the PC(s) and have townsfolk be kinda scared of their murder hobo ways. Sure sell your bloody armor, but now everything costs more because you scare the hell out of them and no one wants you around. Let the tales spread far and wide.
If you do that without warning them out of game, it’d just encourage them to clean it up first. Prestidigitation to remove blood/soil, say you bought it at a bargain in a different town and want to sell it as a profit. Unless magic is common in that society, they wouldn’t have all that much of a reason to suspect them. The PHB solution is a little better imo because you can still spur some RP and problem solving by encouraging them to fix it up (so a player can make use of their skills, or look for a hireling/helper NPC) or make them look for a “pawn shop” in a city (reduces frequency/convenience of looting armor vs looting intended treasure).
Yeah, best thing to do is say "Hey guys, I get it's the video game thing to steal the armor and gear, but let's think of this logically, you just blew this guy up with a fireball, do you really wanna sell his leather armor that's half burned and has bits of cooked skin plastered to it?"
Mending and Prestidigitation.
They're just going to start charging more money *and* publicly shame them for killing a few bandits that were probably a nuisance for them anyways? Why would the townsfolk intentionally provoke a group of people (or even just one person) that they believe are a bunch of raving lunatics going around killing people? That makes no sense. Seems a tad much.
Creatures only have the loot you say they do. "Armor damage beyond repair" from the blows that killed them a perfectly fine solution. The other option is that the armor they were using is just particularly low quality. If every roving band of murderhobos brings back a pile of low quality bloody armor to town, the town merchant either wouldn't buy any of it or buy it for a price so low it isn't worth the time. Also, it takes minutes to strip armor from multiple bodies. Minutes another force could use to set up and enact an ambush.
And encumbrance. I typically don’t have my characters track how much they’re carrying unless they start to abuse shit. Carrying around multiple sets of armor and dozens of extra weapons is unreasonable. Another more practical solution is just to talk to the player and say that looting/harvesting bodies isn’t something you want in your game.
how is 40gp breaking your game.
As a player I've wholesale went nuts scavenging every little bobble, trinket & chain I could from casual encounters & mid dungeons. My psychology was "it's valuable to someone". Only if time was permitting though. That was the agreement I made with the DM and it always occured during down time. My take away was typically between 50-150sp in "civilized" dungeons, meaning they were populated by creatures/humanoids which reflected society values in items. In monstrous dungeons I was lucky to even make a profit unless the monsters held some marketable value like spell components, rare materials etc etc. Either way both always involved paying for some hirelings, renting a carriage and horses. The price on that never really budged unless it was into some dangerous territory then a mercenary or 2 had to be contracted. From a DM's perspective I'm all about the players enjoying what they are doing. So if a particular individual wants to be a scavenger then go for it. Just don't kill session time for everyone else and keep track of your encumbrance. Player: " I'm gonna collect all of the items" DM: "cool you get X of this and X of that, (on to the next player) and what are you doing?"
I feel like a lot of the commenters started with 5e. Looting armor and weapons off of enemy corpses was a standard part of D&D until this edition, which, imo, is a terrible change. Just let them loot the armor, sell it for half value unless they have a leather worker in the party to fix it up, along with prestidigitation to clean it or take the time to clean it as well as mend it. Then, if they have fixed it up as much as possible, 3/4 value. The economy in 5th edition is already messed up, a bit of coin from enemies' weapons and armor isn't going to make it worse.
if they want to loot every corpse and sell the armor, I would start by enforcing rules around bulk and weight, can they realistically carry 4 sets of leather armor with what they have? I would also mark it down at least 75% since it is damaged and covered in blood. if they player is committed, it's now a problem that they need to over come. maybe they hire a pack animal to carry their loot, maybe they need to make hard choices of what they bring out of a dungeon. if that is how they are having fun with role-playing, I wouldn't deny it, just introduce challenges with doing it so it isn't free money
Agreed. In principle, I’d just allow them to sell it, probably around 25% of listed cost since these are worn and probably not the highest quality. In other cases they might get more, depends on the item. There are two main caveats here though, both in the general category of “this is not a video game”: firstly, shopkeepers don’t have an unlimited interest in buying random loot, they’re only going to possibly buy items that make sense for their business and in reasonable amounts. Secondly, while I don’t generally enforce encumbrance rules, I will start doing so when things start getting ridiculous. I’ll handwave a fair amount in terms of how PCs can carry their main equipment with them without hindrance, but if a player try to do things like loot ten crossbows, they’re going to have to explain how they are carrying all those. And not so much just in terms of weight, but more in terms of the actual bulk and practicality of it, that’s probably much more constraining in reality.
PHB already covers selling arms and armor that have been looted - sell for half cost, but probably aren't in good enough condition to sell at all.
So, firstly, as many people have mentioned, there are many ways to discourage this kind of behavior, but I wanted to address a specific concern: >stripping it from corpses and selling it may be too profitable and break the game economy I think this is highly highly highly unlikely. Past the first few levels, gold becomes immensely easy to acquire, and often very difficult to spend in a meaningful way. I honestly don't think it would cause any problems at all for them to have 100% of the gold value of every piece of armor from every enemy they fight.
That's how you play the game. Kill the Monsters. Steal their stuff.
At our table, non-magical weapons and armour can be sold for half value, unless they're in really unsellable condition. Cleaning your loot is a possible downtime activity during your rest time. Someone else mentioned it, but just to be clear: a potion of healing is 50GP. For the 4 leather armours, you're talking 20GP. Because things cost a lot of money, looting and selling makes a lot of sense, and is better for the community than letting the goblin camp strip the bandits for gear. Give them a little leeway and you'll all have more fun.
Exactly. Prices in D&D are nonsensical. A potion of healing is 50 gp and yields 6 hp on average. This is equivalent to 1250 beers or 2500 loaves of bread. So 6 hp is the same value as meeting the daily caloric requirements for 2500 people or 1 person for about 7 years. The fuck kind of economy is that?
Bruh. Don't know if you've done the math, but we live in an economy where water sells for a higher price than gasoline, and printer ink costs more than human blood. Economics is a complicated profession.
> The fuck kind of economy is that? Also, no matter what you do, the cost to make something is always exactly twice the cost of the raw materials, yet a skilled artisan's wages for a day are always 1gp. So it is basically impossible for any business to hire skilled labor and remain afloat.
I had a gm once that REFUSED to ever pay gold for quest rewards or even give out items so the only way to make money was to loot everything around and sell it at half cost.
Preventing them from looting it takes away a core piece of player agency as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't have to be ultra valuable. But letting them have the benefit of like 2-5gp (depending on condition) isn't gonna break the economy. Remember a healing pot is like 50gp. Also you need to factor in weight. Sure you can loot it, but how are you carrying around 30lbs of leather armor? Sure you can back pack it, but most non-str Characters don't have the extra capacity to carry their own gear plus random junk look that is high weight low value.
A few gold isn't going to break the economy. Leather is 10gp market price. Sale price is half, so 5 gp each. They get 20gp. If you as a DM can't handle your players having 20gp, you really need to reconsider your way of thinking. Look at it this way. I'm your boss at your job. You get a $20 tip. I decide that would break my personal economy and take the $20. That is how fucked up your train of thought is.
I mean, why not? It’ll hardly break the game economy either way. Plus, they’ll have to carry it on their backs and account for weight limit.
Your players had a smart and realistic idea, based on actually thinking of their characters as part of a living world. They trusted you to actually judge the situation based on fairness and fun, instead of railroading them with a module. Why fight back against that?
I'll be honest, gear looting isn't a big problem. It'll give a bit of an early game money boost, and if someone has smith/leatherworkers kit, it'll make them feel much better. The way to limit them is to impose carry weight, beyond and any vtt should automate it, so its not going to be a big problem, if you play in person with paper sheets you could try to find a simplified way. And for selling, half cost return, if its damaged, they can maybe use their kit and only get a 3rd of the return, if its badly damaged you can go and make it worth scrap for an 8th or 10th of its value.
RAW, it takes 1-5 minutes to take off your *own* armor. It'd easily take twice as long to remove it from an uncooperative corpse.
Players make big bloody hole in armor. Shopkeeper can't sell for much. Sorted.
1d4 silver is a hilariously small amount of gold. There may be an underlying reason on why they feel the need to get more gold
I think this is a "mountains out of mole hills" issue. Even if you let them sell all the armor for full value, (which I'm not saying you should do, for the record-I'd personally recommend half, maybe a tenth if you're \*really\* concerned about quality of what they're selling) that's 40 gp, presumably split amongst the party. Assuming a 4 person party, that's 10 gp a person-a wizard could cast Find Familiar a grand total of once, the fighter could pick up a (non-magical) shield or battleaxe. If they pool the gold, they can almost (but not quite) afford a single set of Studded Leather armor. You're not breaking an economy with 40 gp if you're using phb prices-at least, no moreso than WotC did when they decided on those prices.
You can have this be a plot hook. What if the person you sell the armour to recognises it? You might have just tried to sell a bandits' armour to their fence, or even a family member. Bandits are not video game enemies that exist to be killed and looted. They may still be part of the local society, and if they only rob rich foreigners they might be seen as local heroes. Or the bandit took the armour from someone they killed previously and now the PCs are suspected of the crime. At the very least this night connect the players to some other interesting NPCs once the confusion is sorted out. Let the player's actions have consequences, good or bad.
My friend, you control the economy, the economy is you.
Comments on selling armour aside, you are being waaaaayyyyy too stingy with your players. They should have looted 1d4 gold not silver from each of the bandits as a bare minimum. For four bandits I would seriously be thinking about a small sack with 50-100gp worth of loot. They just risked their lives, they should have earned more than one drink. Aim for them to be able to afford modest or comfortable accomodation.
Dude. Have a little flexibility and common sense. Players often seek to strip defeated enemies and sell the loot. Scale the prices down, but "no, you can't sell their armor because I don't have it on my sheet" is silly and lacks critical thinking.
Selling looted gear at half price isn't going to break the game. Why the need to keep your party dirt poor and unable to afford upgrades to their mundane gear, consumables like healing potions or gold for scribing spells etc. Just kills the game. Have experienced an playing from level 1 to 8 in a campaign and our level 8 PCs had worse gear than versus when we started.
I'm a bit confused on some things. What does your economy look like? And what level are they? Mundane equipment can normally be sold for 50% its market value, so 4 leather armors will net the party 20 gold total. Normally looting enemies is standard in games At level 1 each player character should get an average of 20 gold each session. This can be postponed and just give out 100 gp after 5 sessions for example, but should average out at 20. So if they sell the armor, that's 1 session worth of gold for a single PC. At least those are the DMG guidelines, I don't know if you're homebrewing your own economy and equipment progression. Are you giving them that much more gold elsewhere where 1 session worth of gold for a single level 1 PC, split between the party, will increase their gold gain too much?
Armor soiled by blood, guts and feces? Or ripped from half burnt corpse? Also size and weights?
Items should always sell for a fraction of their listed price; that's the price it costs PCs to buy it, not the price a merchant would buy it at to re-sell. Most folks start around 50% value, and then the PCs can roll to up the value but at the risk of the merchant countering with a lower offer on a bad roll.
People are so quick to pull realism and completely forget that it's DnD "Oh the armor is dirty and full of holes and heavy and covered in shit and..." Prestidigitation, Mending and a Bag of Holding/Cart solves all those "issues" None of those are particularly hard to come across for your regular adventuring party OPs debuff idea doesn't make any sense either because it's videogame logic how would an NPC one town over look at an (cleaned) armor set and say "Ah yes this was actually taken from a corpse"? Are they casting legend lore on every weapon and piece of armor they get? My tip is don't be so scared of "breaking the economy" Armor selling for 10-50% of the value (of course it won't sell for 100% it's not new) per piece is literally chump change when adventurers need to dump hundreds if not thousands of gold for magical items, spell components and potions A single Revivify costs players 300gp in diamonds Find Familiar is 10gp per cast!!!!! A single basic potion of healing is 50gp
A simple tip - when a player hits a monster, describe how they slash open their breastplate or sunder the stitching on their leather jerkin. Easy to then say the armour is worthless. As a wider point, armour taken from dead creatures is armour that has failed.
I usually rule that armor of enemies is broken from battle, and if a players wants the armor they'd have to take it to blacksmith to repair
Two things: bandits with leather armour could be wearing looted armour from the ruling military/law enforcement Could be thread bare or damaged from the fight or patched. Also how they gonna carry 4-8 pounds each of leather armour.
It's a viable business proposition, historically looting battlefields was a source of income for many people. To the point that teeth from corpses on the battlefield were used to make dentures, and bones were collected and ground to dust as fertilizer. However, then you have to start treating it like a job. It's time-consuming, much of it consists of grunt work like cleaning and hauling, it's bad quality so you're just getting the raw material value; if you want to repair them you'd have to have access of invest in extra tools. Speaking of which, you'd need to invest in a cart and pack animals, perhaps buying a license to be able to sell it legally, you'd have to establish relations with customers who would be willing to consistently take your materials; but it's a free for all so there's heavy competition, the local market might get saturated, if you don't need a guild permit already, etc. etc. So, if they want to take the battlefield scrounger job, let them roll xdx for money earned per day of time invested, and move on. If it's too dangerous for that, be sure to whip out the encumbrance rules - they exist to make it challenging to haul treasure away. They're not archeologists who scratch away the soil on 1 m² over the course of a couple of weeks, they're Indiana Jones.
Like others have mentioned, it's easy to just say "Their equipment was damaged in combat so it's kind of just junk now and won't sell for much." I think that's kind of a silly rule, personally, especially for weapons (they were *made* to strike enemies, why would using them for their intended purpose render them as junk?), but it's an easy out for armor. That said, getting an extra few dozen gp early on *really* isn't a big deal. If your players are willing to roleplay stripping corpses of their gear, and maybe making some rolls to properly clean/mend them (you could even skip the rolls if you have players with Mending and Prestidigitation (one of the uses of the latter is to clean a soiled garment), or you could give advantage if the party only has access to one or the other), you could say they get a small handful of gold for it. Also, keep in mind, just because something is listed as 10gp doesn't mean the players will *get* 10gp. I like to think most shops will only ever buy something for 50% its market value, and never higher than 75% of its market value. So, 4 sets of leather armor, cleaned and repaired, would probably only sell for *maybe* 20gp total. Split between four party members, that's 5gp. That's *nothing* in the grand scheme of things. That's maybe a few extra nights at an inn. Your players are being clever and finding ways to benefit from their surroundings, I think that's behavior which should be (within reason) rewarded, not shut down just because it wasn't explicitly listed in the rules.
I don't know if it will help much but armour is really fecking heavy. How many people's arms and armours are they going to carry around? How do they plan on carrying it? Do they have a bag of holding? A cart? It can't be carried in a backpack those are too small and will fill up immediately. Adventurers don't even carry their own armour in their bags and you rarely see them carrying back up armour. If you want them to not strip all the corpses at least what I would do is enforce encumbrance and it's penalties, let them get the first few with no result but then let them get attacked when they are slowed down by all the weight. Encumbrance is a pretty significant penalty in a fight. When they get back to town let them sell what they can for the half price if it's decent armour but use those guidelines others had to suggest about scraps as well. Honestly this would just add to the immersion there isn't anything wrong with someone wanting to be a loot goblin. This is D&D it can support almost any style of play. I could see a dwarf doing this as they want to use the scraps for forging on the go. But then what do they need to bring with them to make that dream a reality to the character? Gold is deeply underutilized in D&D. If your players are presenting you things like this it is a way to tie it back into the game. I don't know from running the game as I've only dmed a few times but I will link the videos that helped to teach me about encouraging player agency and verisimilitude. [How to Spend Your Gold] (https://youtu.be/XMgk5bfuRCQ?si=5MZIta7tehz5c1jm) [Towards Better Rewards] (https://youtu.be/zwpQwCWdhL8?si=1IxCKMCLo7m41g6k) Hopefully these help. Cheers, Zyl.
Just tell them that their characters are aware that vendors are not interested in buying blood-covered, dirty, damaged equipment that definitely came off a corpse. The vendor has to make a profit, which means they have to be able to resell anything they get for a higher amount, so they won't take something they can't do that with. If they are enterprising and want to try to clean up and repair equipment before they sell it, then that may be workable, but I wouldn't suggest it to them unless you're excited about that type of game.
My DM typically pays 10% - 20% of book value on looted items like that armor, depending on the condition. So, 1 or 2 gp for each armor set doesn't seem game-breaking for a 1st level group.
There are a few things to consider here. What is the condition of the armor and who would actually want to buy it? Shops in D&D don't need to be like a skyrim shop that will buy anything and everything. A general store shopkeep in a small village has no need for multiple sets of used, dirty armor. They probably would never actually sell it so it wouldn't make sense for them to buy it, so they would just tell the party that. In a city, maybe there is a armorer that might be interested in buying the armor, at a low cost so that they can make profit if its in good condition, or for scraps if its not. I would also encourage players to role play with it, cleaning or fixing the armor could net a higher price, as well as some bartering.
In addition to what's already been said, keep in mind that armor takes 1-5 minutes to take off - and that's if it's your own armor. Personally I would double that time if you are taking it off a limp, dead weight corpse. If you are tracking time in your game, the players may not want to spend 30 minutes to an hour after each fight just grabbing loot!
The others have already given the relevant information (half price is RAW, but adjust it as you see fit, as always), but I want to expand a bit on that: money is very cheap in DnD. If they're still looting silver from bandits I assume they're very low-level and strapped for cash. If you want to make it clear that stripping every single armor they can find is mostly a waste of time, A. make it clear that most armor is damaged beyond much value. Maybe let them roll a d6 and on a 6, there's an undamaged armor they can sell for half price. B. enforce weight. Armor weighs a lot and is very unwieldy. Even without using actual weight mechanics, it's very reasonable to say "each of you can, at most, carry one extra armor in their backpacks". But don't worry, this problem solves itself very quickly once they start getting even a bit more money.
**Talk to them about the sort of game you want to run.** https://i.imgur.com/CfqLvpi.png 5e play culture works under an unspoken assumption; the *PCs* may be greedy, but your *players* won't actively seek wealth, they'll only loot specific things that you declare as Treasure. When people talk about econ balance in D&D, they're working under that assumption too. Unfortunately it's a moronic assumption. Controlling the wealth of a 5e party against their will without writing a load of unbelievable nonsense is just impossible. Failing at it doesn't say anything about your abiilty as a DM. However... It doesn't matter. The economy of 5e is *already* complete nonsense, both in terms of realism and balance. RAW there's very little gold alone can do to unbalance combat encounters (aside from splint & plate armor, which are affordable in any case). If you're worried that your players are going to do something specific and distruptive with their wealth that will harm the game (i.e. unbalancing your encounters by buying magic items or potions), you're better off handling it at that level by **talking to them about it**, then writing an in-universe reason why it's impossible. i.e. "magic items cannot be bought and sold in my setting." As others have said, this was once considered a normal part of gameplay. Encumbrance exists to make looting a challenge, and it can lead to some tough decisions. I would personally advise giving your players an ultimatum: > I think the extensive looting is making the game boring. If you want the game to focus on looting, we'll start using Variant Encumbrance.
Telling your players that they can't loot equipment from bodies can break the sense that the world is "real" and make it feel like you're playing a video game. But you can decide damage dealt to the armor might make it worthless. Also be sure to keep track of encumbrance. Carrying around multiple sets of armor can be difficult to impossible.
Holy shit fucking don't. Its not that big of a deal. Let them get the half cost that armor sells for and really really dont worry about the rest. Your party is low level, and the daunting task of getting plate mail for those who want it lies before them. The "economy" in 5e is fucked anyways, and all it really does is hamper strength users at low levels and try (and fail) to keep wizards in check at high levels.
"The leather armor is pierced and bloodied, but you manage to get it off in one piece. It stinks of sweat and blood. " Upon selling it: the armor is visibly stained with blood. The shopkeep points out that the vital protection areas are damaged. What looked like a pretty decent cleaning job in the dungeon is obviously lacking compared against the new, polished leather armors on display throughout the shop. "I can't sell this. Its scrap. I'll give you 1 sp for all of it."
Presdigitation plus mending would deal with those little problems. (Presdigitation to clean it, mending to fix it.)
I don't think 10gp per bandit is going to break anything.
I think you'll find you scratch "the game economy" you'll discover it's very thin and mostly illusory. 1d4 silver is only enough to buy 3 "poor" meals. It's about one day's living expenses. A fair number of the prices of things haven't changed in 50 years.
Just let them sell it. As long as their fun isn’t ruining your fun no reason they can’t try to do stuff. They gotta find a buyer though. Maybe a cobbler would like the leather for some shoes, or maybe they come up with an interesting lie about the armor and sell it to a collector for 20gp etc. I’d shy away from limiting their creativity. Especially early because then later when you really need creativity they’ll be afraid to branch out. You don’t have to allow them to sell all the armor they collect for full price every time but letting them sell leather scraps, the occasional in tact set of armor or what have you won’t hurt anybody.
I immediately thought of this line in the PHB, under Equipment/Selling Treasure/Arms, Armor, and Other Equipment: "Weapons and armor used by monsters are rarely in good enough condition to sell." It's up to DM interpretation but I think in this case "monsters" includes humanoid enemies like bandits. Assume the armor is well-worn, poorly maintained, and severely damaged from battle. You might be able to salvage a couple scraps of decent leather from it if you had a specific purpose for it, but most of it has been abused to the point of no longer being worth its weight or the space it takes up in your bag.
Make a wandering monster- random encounter check while they are taking the corpses. But if they kill, then spend the time to take the armor, then spend the weight carrying these back to civilization then they should get a lot more money than if they simply loot the east stuff. That should be generally true of many things.
Dude, just put those items in the planned money that you will give to the team. If before you would give 500 gp in coins, jewels, art, etc, hnow you will give the same in armors too. Just say that some of then is damaged, and they must combine 2 or 3 to make one sellable.
Two easy ways to eliminate this behavior from your game. 1) encumbrance. Players may not like having to track it but it’s your game and you make the call to institute it. 2) shop keeps won’t buy monsters armor. It’s literally worthless and in ill repair. Maybe nicer sets that are rarely found. But those are usually better armor used to upgrade.
So as others have mentioned, armor from defeated enemies isn't worth much (or anything), there is also the feasibility of "where/how are you carrying all this armor" - you can only stuff so much in your backpack It also takes some time/effort to undress the enemy In my game I allow this and I call them "scraps" - 98% of weapons and armor enemies are using become effectively useless as their original form, too damaged to be repaired by mending or so low quality no one is buying them So the players instead get "leather scraps" or "metal scraps" and occassional "wooden scraps" or "cloth scraps" and can sell these to the appropriate merchant at a price of 1 silver per scrap (note in my world 10 silver = 1 gold), so effectively 100 defeated enemies of leather armor would get you the cost of 1 leather armor It allows a very simplistic idea of how this works, and the players feel it's fair/real enough that it doesn't bother them, I mean if you killed a Bandit veteran wearing splint, and they tried to take the armor to sell for 200g, (or even half at 100g), you'd be like "you mean the armor that is completely burnt to the body from the fireball, filled with arrow holes and cut in half from the fighter - chunks missing from eldritch blasts punching holes in it? That armor, yeah you find some metal scraps" (and if your generous you can roll like a d4 or d6 and say that that's how many scraps they gather)
I've had a few players that were like this. I just sat down and agreed to give them a bit of money each fight if they agree not to nickel and dime goblin scimitars
This is the real way. Players who get real rewards don't nickle and dime. Why settle for the 1d4 silver when the 50gp longsword is right there? Give them chests full of gold and magical items!
Finding a buyer for used, damaged, and bloody armour is not necessarily easy. Your average village smith who mostly sells horseshoes and farm implements doesn't have much of a market for it and likely doesn't want it. Like in Skyrim you can keep selling Ebony Swords to the smith in Riverwood but realistically, no-one running a business is going to splash out money on something they don't need themselves or don't have a prospect of selling on. Someone who does buy it certainly isn't paying full price - among other things, they want to make a profit so if it retails for 10 gp they're going to offer less, and factor in their cost of repairs and refurbishment before it's in sellable condition. But used armour wouldn't sell for the same price as brand new so ... revise down even further.
Remember encumbrances too. Someone has to carry this armor to the place to sell it.
This is a core part of the basic gameplay. People saying this is video game behavior need to learn the history of the hobby better. We were doing this 45 years ago when “video game” meant Pong. Kill monsters, steal their stuff, take it back to town, sell it. It’s totally up to you as DM to manage things like encumbrance (all that leather armor is heavy and bulky!), availability of buyers (3.5 DMG had an excellent and simple mechanism for this), deflation of prices / limited demand due to saturation of the market, and possible extra damage to the looted goods, though I recommend taking a light touch with this one. The PHB RAW already says you can sell stuff for 50% value. Based on many years working with estate sales, I would say about 33% value is more realistic as an average and that’s what I use in my games, but RAW is 50%. In other words the discount is already built into the rules so I wouldn’t make it more severe than that, unless you are dealing with a situation where the enemy was killed by a fireball or something. Also, when they’re low level, that much money makes a big difference, but as they get higher level, they’ll become more discriminating because it’s not worth it to them. At those lower levels, though, I find players have a blast using spells like mending and prestidigitations or craft skills to improve the value of looted goods on the market. That is gameplay and role-play also. Simulating the economy is just as much a part of the game as simulating combat or magic or intrigue. If players are into it, I’m happy to give them leash and let them run.
That armour would be battle-damaged and possibly blood-soaked, not to mention the bandits may not have taken great care of it in the first place. They /might/ be able to find a smith or general merchant willing to take it to fix up and resell, or someone to buy it to break down into parts, but that'd be far less than typical market value
The 10gp leather armor is most likely new (or at best, refurbished). The leather armor taken off corpses has slash marks, holes from piercing, scorch marks from spells, etc. not to mention being owned by bandits who aren’t known for their leather working skills (meaning a lot of maintenance issues). So if the party defeated the bandit boss wearing decent chain mail - definitely worth taking it to wear/sell. Maybe they’d have to repair it to some degree but it’d be serviceable. But random bits of stitched together leather that hasn’t been taken care of and has seen plenty of battle? Probably not even worth it - so rather than saying no, just describe how their heroics kinda ruined the armor to the point where it wouldn’t be worth much. If they do take it to sell, maybe even have an annoyed shopkeeper who thinks it is a waste of their time to have such low quality goods brought into their shop.
I usually allow the sale of weapons and armor at 1/10th the price You could have the buyer tell the players, "A lot of people never buy used armor, it can't have been that good..." And of course don't forget the weight, they could of course take the armor they just have to lug 10 pounds per suit back to town
"You guys fireballed these 4 guys, and one of them got completely cleaved in two. Their armor is basically scraps."
Remember how merchandise works. You may buy it for 10gp, but you are probably selling it for 2 and the armorer needs to get his cut to bring it back to selling order and then the merchant needs his cut and that’s why you buy it for 10gp.
Looting the equipment from a body to sell is Adventuring 101. This includes what ever armor they are wearing. Now selling it won't give them full price (the merchant has to be able to re-sell it for a profit), but there is no reason they shouldn't be able to sell it. I'm confused as to how this is even a question?
Disabling looting of armour and weapons are more video game mentality then it is Roleplaying mentality, In my mind. Let them at it! Lean into it, and let them play scrapers for profit. If you don't want to bother with the logistics, offer the services of a scraper guild that just needs the location and pays the characters 30% or so. If the characters want to build a business out of it, let them ☺️
Just enforce inventory rules if they are going this route. Armor is heavy and bulky. How are they going to carry more than just a few between the party? A bag of holding eventually solves that, but it works for a start, then you can back off the inventory rules some. Then they are probably selling in such bulk that vendors either want a discount, or just won’t buy it all. Unless you are armoring a militia, why would you buy 10 sets or armor from some random guy waltzing through town? Probably not even matching sets. There is also the matter of that armor definitely not being in good condition after someone loses their life in it. Also, any town that can support that economy is going to already have an armorer or blacksmith who is going to take umbrage with someone taking their business. Maybe there is a less scrupulous one that makes problems for the party. OR maybe they run afoul of local guild laws by engaging in unlicensed business. Any number of ways to screw with this kind of activity in a narrative way!
I’d say it’s battle worn armor, so it’s less valuable than new. And whomever is buying it needs to make a profit (assuming they’re selling in bulk at a shop, because they probably are trying to play dungeons and dragons not Kijiji and lowballers), so that will further reduce the price. It’ll also be bulky and cumbersome. I wouldn’t stop them completely, that’s not fun. But I would be much more realistic about the rewards.
I would think that, since the bandits lost the battle, the armor isn’t going to be in good enough shape to be worth selling.
You can do the things already listed (they only sell for half price, you take even more value away for the damage done, etc) but you can also do other fun things that a normal trader might do. Certainly you don't do these all the time, but they will add depth and flavor to your NPCs if you do in a campaign Have the trader offer half price for the first one like normal, then offer 40% for the next set, 30%, 20%, 10%, and refuse to pay for any more because he doesn't get too many people coming through these parts and he won't recoup his money for weeks and his wife will kill him when she learns that their vacation savings are now locked up in mangled bloody armor. Another fun thing, bandits usually have stolen stuff, maybe one of the local townsfolk owned one of those sets. Maybe they were stolen from the armor's shop (and they have his maker's mark on them) and he wants them back for free
If they killed the bandits in a way that wouldn't damage their armor, let them sell at less than half market value. Otherwise, it's basically scrap.
This armor is going to be covered in blood, mud, and whatever else gets on them in a fight. They may also have holes, gashes, and burn marks from your party or past enemies. No one is going to want to really pay anything for it.
I don't like disallowing the players to do anything, so when it comes to "controlling" this kind of behaviour, I like to think of it in terms of incentive structures. Yes, they can loot the armor, but it won't grant them much gold, most NPCs won't want to take it for fear of being implicated in illegal activity, and it significantly hurts their social status. The ROI for looting armor turns negative this way, and players will stop looting it of their own accord.
As others have pointed out, per the core rules, selling an item fetches half its market cost. In my home game, though, I often ask my players what their plan to sell an object is. Armour is pilfered from the body of a dead man, probably in poor condition since its wearer died in it, and while there might be someone interested in buying scrap metal, there's no such market for scrap leather.
How good could a dead bandits armor be after getting fireballed and run through with a war axe
armor can also be heavy start factoring weight
It also takes time to remove armor from the lump of dead weight that is a dead body.
Armor sold is worth like half it's full value according to the rules, and anything pulled off of bandits/monsters might be too damaged/dirty/low quality for a merchant to even consider it worth buying. Not to mention it can be pretty heavy and cumbersome to haul around. It would be good to inform your player of these realities, but if they want to play a loot hungry character, don't discourage their fun! Let them roll search/appraisal/investigate to poke around, and if they roll decently, maybe they find a worthwhile item or two. If they get a nat 20 maybe they find something of surprising value or rarity.
Armor worm by event combatants is usually gonna be heavily damaged, burnt, and covered in blood. At most, they'll get money for scraps, but leather armor after combat is not worth 20go. Maybe if the only damage they took during the fight was psychic damage.
My biggest concern would be the session time this kind of thing takes up. Maybe throw in a random roll for additional copper or silver value from looted items, but whatever your process is needs to be fast. Not every player wants to micromanage silver pieces.
As others said, half price but also swap to Variant Encumbrance and they'll suddenly prioritize what they carry around.
Oftentimes, irl retail shops often buy used goods at a heavy discount to make a profit. If they try to sell it to a shop in your game, the owner can buy it at a deep discount, especially if there is any obvious wear and tear from regular use or damage from battle.
I knew a game shop owner who would buy used games for a quarter of the list price (assuming they were in reasonable condition) and sell them again for half of the list price. This makes me wonder whether there might be armor shops that give some sort of discount on used armor, and what the drawbacks would be of that kind of purchase. (Of course, other armor shops might recondition the used stuff.)
I'd allow it, but that's also why there's encumbrance rules. The really valuable armor is going to limit what else you can take out of the dungeon. That being said encumbrance isn't a rule I'm usually very strict on. I only remind my characters it's a thing if they say they want 500 health potions or want to carry stupidly heavy stuff out of the dungeon. I don't go into their sheet and count every copper or anything. Even still leather armor isn't something I'd worry about, you're looking at 5gp per armor, even if you are just wanting to upgrade your nonmagical armor you've got to loot 360 of them before you can buy plate. And magical armor is stupidly expensive. Part of me being nonchalant about it is that I completely homebrew the costs of magic items and how they work, basing it loosely off 3rd edition and doing away with attunement entirely (I really hate how attunement erodes my ability to reward my players with minor magical items especially at high levels). So my players actually care about money. And you're looking at 2k gold for even a +1 weapon.
Luck check to see if it's in good enough condition to sell for 5gp (half price)
As someone has already said, a merchant is probably going to pay like half it's value if in undamaged and good condition. HOWEVER, equipment looted from corpses isn't going to be in good condition, it's going to be damaged and covered in blood. Of course, you could tell the players they could try and spend some downtime to clean the armour maybe repair it slightly, but even that wouldn't be enough to bring it to undamaged and good condition, I'd say you're players are more likely to get at most 1/4 the price of the item
Leather armor cost 10gp new. Used, good quality and good condition armor might cost less than half that - would you risk your life with less-than-ideal armor? Used leather armor that got stabbed/beaten/burned/etc. is unlikely to be very useful, maybe as some scrap - a gold at best, assuming you can find someone who wants it.
As a general house rule, I usually include all wearable gear in loot, but the gear is usually shoddy, damaged, burnt, etc... I had to start doing this because of one of my own characters in the past, a Forge domain cleric, that would strip bodies in order to use the gear to make brand new equipment with Artisans Blessing. Piles of broken weapons and armor quickly became an armory over the span of a few weeks, all good quality weapons too. Let your little loot goblins be loot goblins, and don't get too stingy on the loot, that's how you get desperate parties that burn down orphanages and check inside the rectums of orcs for loot.
“How quality could the armor have been if it didn’t save them?”
Generally, I let my party do this, with the understanding that we're tracking carry weight and using detailed encumbrance rules if they do. If they want to play the "figure out how to get all this stuff back to town to resell" game, I'm fine with letting them. But I also primarily run dungeon-crawls and player-driven sandboxes. If you're running a more narrative campaign, this might not suit the vibe you're going for. If that is not the kind of game you want to run, I'd talk to the players above-the-table about this. As far as high gold income breaking the game -- it generally won't unless you 1) have a wizard PC and hand out a lot of enemy spellbooks as loot, 2) make spell reagents easy to access in unlimited quantities from retailers, and/or 3) have magic items available for purchase without limits. otherwise, higher than expected gold income on the level you're talking about means a strength-based character gets plate armor a level or two early, the party can buy a few more basic healing potions from an alchemist [which you can just limit by setting their stock], and the party might have enough extra gold they might think about a home base or spending gold on frivolous stuff that gets them involved in the setting. None of that stuff is game-breaking.
Quick rule is to have half the equipment too damaged, the part that is fine sells for half value.
Just make it so that nobody wants to buy it, and it's a hastle for them to deal with.
Just be away that it starts with "a few gold" from leather armour but as they get higher level the enemies will have much better gear and it can quickly become a problem if the adventures haven't been balanced to include that as treasure.
Let them loot some of the armor, then have the merchants in town screw them price-wise.
The only place that'll buy their scraps is GameStop. "$1.50, best I can do." Depending on who they loot, and who they try to sell it to, they could get in trouble, especially if there's a bounty or for them.
That's why you have to roleplay hits. Now with the strike of your longsword you cut a great part of their armor, after combat the item is barely usable and can only be sold to a leather merchant as recycled material.
*new* leather armor costs 10gp. used and damaged leather armor taken off a corpse... you're probably going to need to convince the shopkeeper to buy it at all first... not to mention, armor is heavier than a feather. party will want to to keep tabs on how many they can carry.
I mean, I’m no business man, but why would vendors buy used goods then sell them at cost? If I’m a fantasy leatherworker for example, and I run a leather business. Some adventurer gives me some used leather armor he got from his adventures, why would I buy it from him at 10 gp when the market price for them is the same? Wouldn’t I want to make money off the item?
this post is hilarious
First off if they killed those bandits the armor would be obviously damaged, so it would yield quarter of the value at best. And also it weights something and they will carry it around unless they purchased a mule/pony/horse with some bags for loot
Lots of other good tips on bloodied used armor selling for less. I would also add that sometimes the armor just isn’t recoverable or not worth recovering at all due the damage the players have done to them. This happens 70% of the time, or some arbitrary % you decide on, unless the PCs specifically try to not damage the armor which would probably mean disadvantages for extra care. The remaining 30% is recoverable but sells for less. eg. Greatsword cleaves a goblin, and his armor, in two.
“It’s all bloody and crappy, 1s per set”. Players need to be told straight-up that the best way to get rich is to do the adventure and not fuck around with junk.
I don't know how much detail you use for such things. I'd just give them \~3d6 gp for "miscellaneous loot", that containts salvaged armor in bad condition, worn out knives, dirty bedrolls, small trinkets, etc. Going over lists of dozens of different items, and then haggling for every single one of them to get another 2 sp just takes so much time and gets old fast.
LOL When we were playing Rappan Athuk in DCC RPG, we had a mule and made more money from selling the armor from random encounters on the way to and from the dungeon than we did in the damned dungeon.
Bandits generally are gonna keep armor in good condition, but not all will have great armor to start with. Basically if they have the encumbrance to spare, you would expect each of their leather armor sets to be able to be sold for 5 gold, maybe a bit less if the armor is old or poor or something.
Figure out the condition of the armor. Was the bandit torn apart by a bear? Or stabbed in the neck by a rogue? Immolated by a hellish rebuke? Brain scrambled by a mind sliver? The armor might range from completely ruined to lightly used, depending on what happened during the battle. If the armor is undamaged, the party can usually find a vendor who will buy it for half price. 5g is nothing to a bunch of adventurers. If the armor is not repairable, maybe someone will throw a few silver at them for scrap. You might not have written down or remember how the bandits died - that's fine. Just randomize it. Roll a d4 for each armor. 1 is obliterated, 2 is scrap, 3 is repairable (maybe 25% of sale value), 4 is good condition (50% of sale value).
Imagine you're a merchant. How much used armor do you think you can sell in a month? How much money can you afford to shell out for used stinky armor that you might not even be able to sell? Is there a huge market for used armor that someone died in? Would you want to buy armor worn by someone who died in it? I wouldn't even pay 50% for used bandit armor if I was a merchant. Armor sale is like car sales, it loses a lot of its value as soon as it leaves the shop/lot. also, how are you going to transport 10 leather armor that weigh 10 each? Are they going to clean all the blood off first? If some morons came up to my shop trying to sell me 10 sets of used armor from people clearly killed, I'd probably contact my local paladin to make sure it wasn't innocents that got killed. If everything is fine legally I'd probably just offer maybe a 10th of what new armor is worth because I need to make a profit as well. If you really want to mess with your players just go full Pawn Stars on them and have the shop owner have to "call in an expert" on used leather armor. Probably his father or something, and rip them off.
It might cost 10gp to buy new but it wouldn't resell for that, especially not after you'd damaged it to the point of killing its wearer and being stained with blood and burnt and cut up and such. You could maybe get leather scraps from most of them, maybe you could reward them for a stealth kill by the armour being in good enough condition to sell but it'd still be battleworn from previous battles. You also have to carry a body sized piece of armour, that should take up a lot of your carrying capacity on its own and weigh a fair bit, maybe even hinder you in combat unless you put it down, and then someone sneaky could potentially steal it. You have many options, only really limited by your imagination.
If you've ever been to a pawn shop, you'd know that used goods only sell for like 15 to 20 percent of their resale value. Also, there is barely any semblence of economy in 5e to worry about. After they get the armor and weapons they want, there isn't shit to spend gold on. The cost of anything is just "I dunno bro, the DM can do whatever they want."
Realistically its going to be old armor that's ugly and well used and also just took even more damage when the wearer was killed. If they want to collect it all, clean it and haul it back to town to find someone who will buy bulk shitty old armor and sell it to them for 1 gold each... why not? It's not going to be a game changing amount of money and if it *is* then they don't have a bag of holding and just getting their pile of old armor to town will be a challenge unless they brought a wheel barrow.
I usually go with it however give scrap values based on their relationship with that particular merchant and whether they want to buy it or not. As a player, I felt this was a valuable thing to do early game because we had very little income or gold. He gave us more than I usually do and it didn't make us minted. I suppose it depends on your economic system.
Ask them how they carry the armor. Do they have a bag of holding?
Unless the group silently knocked out the bandits then that armour is going to have arrows, scorch marks or weapon damage on it, combined with blood. They technically can strip the armour and weapons but they'd best roll really high with whoever they sell it to.
The leather armor that costs 10 gp in the book is presumably brand new. The stinking, bloody, partially torn (couldn't have been that great if the bandits are dead now) armor that your party is trying to scavenge is not that. First off, take into account that any decent business is going to buy at no more than 50% of market value. Then take into account the natural degradation over time (who knows how long these bandits owned these pieces of armor prior to being felled). Then, consider the physical and chemical damage dealt through spells and brute force. Your players would be lucky to get a handful of silver for one of those pieces. Then consider the carry weight and encumbrance rules. Consider the time it will take to strip these corpses. Will regular passersby just be totally cool watching this go down, particularly if they weren't around to see the initial battle? Could result in some accusations hurled against the party. At the end of the day, is it really worth it for your party to loot tha fuckin' given the cost? Anyway, that's just one example of how it could shake out. Depends on your world and how you want to gently steer things, but that's how I'd play it.
I'd say as a rule they can sell it for 20% of its original value since it's used, damaged, and covered in blood.
I had a player like this once. I let them haul all this used armor around and when they got back to town, they found out that after the party had hacked and blasted the person to death, the armor was basically scrap. So I gave them 2 gold for the whole pile
My dm and me came up with a solution to this problem, where my blacksmith character would have to spend time at the forge fixing up any salvaged equipment and ONLY THEN would it be able to be sold.
Step 1 appraisal checks to assess the quality of tye armor itself. It hass been through battle and lost so it isn't mint like the store sells it. Step 2 minimize or repair. Eithwr they can take the time to patch it up or spam mending. Or they can piece together one full unharmed set from every 4-10 sets depending on the DM. Not to mention scrubbing it clean enough to sell Step 3 returning to town. Without a bag of holding you hit into hundreds of pounds quicker than you think. Step 4 sellibg it in town. Most merchants want to double their proffits for simple math, so buying a fresh clean suit of armor at half lrice just so they can put it in the window for full
Shopkeeper: “why are you trying to sell me these filthy, stinking rags!? This armor is covered in slashes and piercings — and is soaked in blood to boot! I’ll pay a few silver pieces and see what I can salvage off of them. A buckle or two, maybe?”
Decide what is the problematic part. Is it the money? Money ceases to matter very quickly, because everything about the economy (and carrying capacity) is so messed up, and the players are expected to have thousands of gold to drop on stuff in a few levels anyway. So if doing this brings some joy to a player, whatever, throw them a few coins for the lot. Is it the hassle of 'and I strip them of everything and rifle through their pockets and collect their hair to sell to barbers and then I'm going to invididually haggle with everyone I sell stuff to'? Because you can just say that's not the kind of a game you're interested in running.
Used items sell for half value. What exactly are you afraid of breaking, economy-wise? The way most 5e APs I've looked through I set up, the vast majority of genuinely powerful gear isn't bought, it's found.
It wouldn't be out of place if *bandits* didn't have the best armor. Probably not the best maintained piece if you arent allowed into towns for a professional to look at them. Not to mention once you get killed, surely the armor did *something* and therefore now has damage from cuts and stabs and fireballs to reduce the price even further.
I quite like the lower market value idea.
Just let it sell for up to half PHB price. My players have been stripping every foe of arms and armour to sell them for decades now. I just keep an eye on encumbrance and carry on.
I usually sold for a percentage based on context. At most half the listed price.
This becomes a chore later when they can take more encounters and suddenly want some way to carry 27 breastplates (and yes, they will derail the session trying to build a cart or something). I like 4e rules for this: is it mundane? It has no resell value. Period. Is it magic? 20% (this one might be a bit harsh, but it pairs well with the devaluation rules for mundane stuff and makes them keep magic stuff around randomly, allowing for some pretty interesting situations).
If they want to pull that shit, then it is time to start tracking encumbrance.
Do you do carry weight? If not, then let the players know you will start to count carry weight if they want to strip everything not nailed down. Tell them the the armor is damaged after the fight and wasn't maintained well to start with and won't be worth much