Thinking back from the disarm/NPC thread going elsewhere and the utter proliferation of light rothe hide dye that everyone seems to carry on them, I suggest the following:

Scale back on the unrealistic drops of dye and (dare I say) junk that underdark races seem to carry and make the weapons and/or armor of more monsters drop on death. This would be a bit more realistic and I don't think would imbalance things since that armor and weapon will be heavy to try and cart back to town with you to sell, but COULD be sold if you were desperate enough.

I originated this idea when I was running my PnP campaign. There always seemed to be WAY too much gold and other coin easily available. If I was running a premade dungeon, I arbitrarily moved the decimal one place over on the number of coin (i.e. if it said the goblin was carrying 100 GP he really had 10) and emphasized that the characters were welcome to strip the armories of the monster lairs they had destroyed as long as they were willing to work out the logistics of getting it all back to town. A few times, they actually went through the effort of doing this and had a lot of fun with it, hiring porters and negotiating and so forth.

Some might say this would clog the server with tons of junk left lying around, but I don't think so - many areas I walk through already have tons of gear left lying around that no one wanted - dyes, little knick-knacks, and so forth.

This could even be worked into an integral part of the economy. Yes, I still like the idea of NPC merchants that have very little "unlimited" stock, but might have quite a bit of miscellaneous gear brought in by adventurers. As long as PCs are bringing gear in to sell back, there would be plenty of "stuff" for newbies to buy as long as they don't happen to log on right after a reset.

/Signed. The amounts of Ancient Pink Svirfneblin dye found on Orogs are mildly disturbing. And I'm beginning to wonder if Trolls are in fact green from birth.

It is quite entertaining as to how many dyes you find. I found about 8 or 9 on Orogs last night... What do Orogs do with dyes? they don't even wear shirts....

I cannot speak for the dyes, but I feel that the gold is generally offered as an alternative to 'realistic' item drops because it spares the server from having to handle a bunch of lag-generating items that mostly won't even get touched either way.

I agree with post nr.1, even though this could lead to people running certain quests to get their nice equipment at lower lvls. If this would be implemented, surely no Duergar Full Plates or Urdlenite Warhammer of The Great Mole With Sweet Enchantments would drop...That would be pretty much like a kick in the groin for the economy.

And yes, all that dye would be disturbing, but the reason they have dyes is actually because they have no shirts to use it on.

I agree with this post as well. Could add a whole new twist on things.

I'd rather have all dyes purchaseable anyways, rather than going through a lot of hassle trying to get a specific color for whatever reason.

That said, I think the current mechanics already work very much in the favor of high strength characters, so I oppose this change simply on that ground. I wouldn't mind seeing maybe, 10 mundane pieces of equipment on top of what is already found in a quest, but beyond that I think it's excessive, even if realistic.

Maybe they're female Orogs who just want to feel pretty!!!

I agree with this wholeheartedly, if a gnoll shoots you with a crossbow and you kill it, where does the crossbow go? However I think this could also be addressed here. Why doesn't the pawnbroker or someone buy the little worthless item drops for say, 200% less than face value so I can atleast get some coin for that worthless gear that I find around.

And why does NO merchant in Sanctuary/Lower buy things that are flagged as stolen?! I mean, not even in Lower!

Because it's an OOC tool to prevent engine abuse.

And also basically prevents any loot from being sold anywhere. Except for the small things you do manage to nick and keep to yourself during quests and which never make it to the "splitting floor", after which *everything* is flagged as stolen...

orchestrated I cannot speak for the dyes, but I feel that the gold is generally offered as an alternative to 'realistic' item drops because it spares the server from having to handle a bunch of lag-generating items that mostly won't even get touched either way.

This is an awesome explanation.

As much as I like the suggestion, I also believe this would be micromanagement to the max. I've investigated servers that have done exactly this. After killing an NPC, you have the option of looting all the items the NPC had on them. It was a mess. Yes, where did the crossbow the gnoll had go? Consider if it did drop. We'd have hundreds of surplus crossbows, and then players would complain that we have too many crossbows! Our current system has been working well for the past two years (some would argue our current system gives too much loot as is, whether they be dyes or not!), and I'm reluctant to make a big change like this.

There appears to be some confusion. Items that are marked stolen have nothing to do with being "stolen," and it has nothing to do whether it is picked up or passes through the hands of multiple PCs. They are flagged this way because it is the easiest way to prevent flavor items from being sold to merchants to more gold than they are worth because Bioware's merchant system is not handled well. There is no good way to accurately set the value of any individual item. Daze, Single Use as an example will be considered worth a decent sum by bioware merchants. But even if we could make the prices sane, we don't really want you selling most of the stuff. Use it or trash it.

I agree there are too many dyes. I did not add them, but especially now that I've made a conscious effort to remove some of the total crap items in the low ambient chests there are probably way too many.

Making every NPC's equipment drop would be a nightmare and cause terrible lag.

A lot of the "junk" that drops out in the wilds isn't really junk at all. I mean, the dyes are, but I've found that for the most part items that seem to have no use at first actually do have a variety of uses if you take the time to find them.

Oh, and entirely support the vast scaling back of dyes.

I'd rather see a drop of minor gold or nothing than more dyes that aren't "rare" in a way, and the "rare" dyes could use some more charges than 2 so you can tell what color they are (Because for some reason svirfneblin dyes are not always the color the item says, despite the fact you can look at it IC, I think it was some kind of way to prove svirfneblin are color blind)