Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Add an Appraise Skill

I don't much about 5e. I haven't played DnD in years, and the last version I touched was 3.5. So, I don't know if there's an appraise skill in the current version or not.

Regardless, it would be nice for this game. Anything to help with the terrible pricing at the traders. I get that you're not going to get full value selling the items, and I suppose I appreciate the marginal bump you get from characters with higher charismas, but if an appraise skill could add to that, then I think that would be wonderful.

All of that said, I don't get why the traders mark everything up so high. Sure, they pay you less than full value. I'm on board with that. But raising the price so high above value? That doesn't make as much sense to me. The value of an object is essentially what you pay for it in a store. If you pay, for instance, 1,000 gold for something then you can't turn around and stamp a 500 gold value on the item. Consider, you're selling it for roughly half "value," which means you're selling it for 250 because it's being valued at 500. Then the merchant is selling it for 1,000. That actually means you're selling it for a quarter of the value instead of a half. Even pawn shops give better deals.

There's no Appraise skill in 5e, and appraising in terms of assessing an item's value would likely fall under different skills/proficiencies for different items (e.g., Arcana for scrolls, or maybe History/Smith's Tools for weapons/armor). As far as negotiating prices is concerned, Persuasion would probably be the best fit overall, but cases could be made for Deception or Intimidation, so maybe using the best of the three would be an option.

My main concern with skill-gating item prices is the inventory shuffle between characters that it can require depending on how it's implemented and the potential frustration of any associated dice rolls (unless they do something like scale savings/earnings based on proficiency bonuses). If they implement reputation for areas/factions (or if they have already without me noticing), basing buying and selling prices on that could be a reasonable approach, as could basing the benefit on having at least one party member present who is proficient in the associated skill(s) even if they aren't the one speaking to the merchant.

Appraising an item's worth I'd make an Investigation check, but Arcana and proficiencies make sense for things within their particular fields too.

I agree about negotiating prices.

I don't care so much what the skill is as I think it would be beneficial to have something in the game to allow for better pricing. (ETA: that said, I think it should be a simple and automatic process, as opposed to having to select something in dialogue and then rolling a dice and so on.)

In regards to shuffling inventory, I don't like that either.

You know how you can eat food from the inventory screen? Well, whoever's portrait (inventory screen portrait, that is) is clicked on is the one who eats the food. It doesn't matter whose inventory supply the food is being eaten from. It only matters whose portrait is clicked on. I think it should be similar to that for trading. The one talking should be able to sell from anyone's inventory screen.

I think appraising could fall under Insight or Investigation?

Insight's more about understanding the motives/emotions of creatures than assessing places or things, but I agree that Investigation would be a good skill for all-purpose appraisal.

I also agree that anything like this should be passive, but a problem that occurs to me regarding my previous idea of using proficiency bonuses is that strictly limiting the scaling of any savings to level progression could easily make it start and end fairly insignificant since the way these games go, you often have a surplus of gold later on and will be less likely to have a need or appreciation for the increased benefit as a result. On the other hand, basing the extent of the savings on the associated ability modifier could leave us with a situation where the effect's too static.

Edit: Maybe a happy medium would be a two-factor approach. Universal adjustments to savings/profits from bought or sold items could be based on your modifier in the ability associated with the skill you're using and area/faction reputation (if that's ever a thing - I wouldn't recommend it for the sake of buying/selling items alone) increasing or decreasing the benefit or penalty as appropriate.

I was dumbly thinking of insight where you judge someone else's appraisal, woops.
Depends on how we have to use gold, even in EA you can end up with more gold than you could think to do with cause Astarion is pretty good at pickpocketing.