I’m really new to this DM’ing and I haven’t played in many years, but getting back into it. On the character portion of DND Beyond my players have discovered the option to “Manage Inventory”. They are wanting to add and or change their items at will. Is this something that is generally allowed? Should they be changing their inventory / armor and such?
If not, what’s the best way to award the upgrades?
My players are all pc gamers and initially wanted to loot everything with the thought they could sell everything to purchase items at some sort of in game Walmart, lol. I think I have squashed that, by having some monsters drop GP / potions etc. upon death. They are still asking about armor upgrades.
Well they can always manage their inventory, to the degree that they can drop unwanted stuff anytime they want, but they can't add new stuff, unless they find a shop that sells it, or the find the items when looting.
In regards to looting things, at the tables I have played, we just about looted everything, and gear could be sold at half the price of a new item. I think that is the most common way of amassing wealth in the early game.
You may find success phrasing it in video game terms. "You can only buy and sell things with a shopkeeper!"
I tend to let my players buy/sell all PHB common items at any place with shops unless there's a story point about scarcity.
I also just have the shop owners buy at a 50% rate when players are selling unwanted goods. That leaves room for a persuasive character to get a better buy rate.
The short answer is no ... just because D&D Beyond makes it possible to change the equipment you have doesn't mean you can. Just like in a video game, a character usually has to either purchase something from a vendor or find it in the world before the item gets added to their character sheet. As DM, you run the world, you control the items they can find, those they keep and those they sell because you set the encounters and control the NPC merchants.
The NPC merchants might be very unlikely to buy the weapons and armor that the characters looted from a bunch of goblins. It might be the wrong size for their customers, very low quality, or perhaps just not smell good. As DM, it is up to you.
Anyway, the bottom line is that the players have an interface to their inventory management for their characters so that they can add ONLY those items that the character has acquired through play.
In addition, there are utility items like healing kits, climbing kits, shovel, tent, rope, backpack, food and many other items that it is again up to the characters to purchase and record on their character sheet so that if these are ever needed they can refer to the character sheet to see if they actually have the needed tool/item available. Many DMs don't pay much attention to the encumbrance rules that limit how much weight/items a character can carry while other DMs do pay fairly close attention to this ... how you want to run it is up to you.
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I’m really new to this DM’ing and I haven’t played in many years, but getting back into it. On the character portion of DND Beyond my players have discovered the option to “Manage Inventory”. They are wanting to add and or change their items at will. Is this something that is generally allowed? Should they be changing their inventory / armor and such?
If not, what’s the best way to award the upgrades?
My players are all pc gamers and initially wanted to loot everything with the thought they could sell everything to purchase items at some sort of in game Walmart, lol. I think I have squashed that, by having some monsters drop GP / potions etc. upon death. They are still asking about armor upgrades.
Well they can always manage their inventory, to the degree that they can drop unwanted stuff anytime they want, but they can't add new stuff, unless they find a shop that sells it, or the find the items when looting.
In regards to looting things, at the tables I have played, we just about looted everything, and gear could be sold at half the price of a new item.
I think that is the most common way of amassing wealth in the early game.
You may find success phrasing it in video game terms. "You can only buy and sell things with a shopkeeper!"
I tend to let my players buy/sell all PHB common items at any place with shops unless there's a story point about scarcity.
I also just have the shop owners buy at a 50% rate when players are selling unwanted goods. That leaves room for a persuasive character to get a better buy rate.
The short answer is no ... just because D&D Beyond makes it possible to change the equipment you have doesn't mean you can. Just like in a video game, a character usually has to either purchase something from a vendor or find it in the world before the item gets added to their character sheet. As DM, you run the world, you control the items they can find, those they keep and those they sell because you set the encounters and control the NPC merchants.
The NPC merchants might be very unlikely to buy the weapons and armor that the characters looted from a bunch of goblins. It might be the wrong size for their customers, very low quality, or perhaps just not smell good. As DM, it is up to you.
Anyway, the bottom line is that the players have an interface to their inventory management for their characters so that they can add ONLY those items that the character has acquired through play.
In addition, there are utility items like healing kits, climbing kits, shovel, tent, rope, backpack, food and many other items that it is again up to the characters to purchase and record on their character sheet so that if these are ever needed they can refer to the character sheet to see if they actually have the needed tool/item available. Many DMs don't pay much attention to the encumbrance rules that limit how much weight/items a character can carry while other DMs do pay fairly close attention to this ... how you want to run it is up to you.