So I’m fairly new to 3d modeling and only started a few days ago, my question is as such. If the problem with high quality models is verts and having to many makes the game lag could you simply combat this by making the model extra large to use less verts for more detail then just scale it down in UDK? Would the vert count stay or would UDK add verts itself?
I am not sure to really understand the question:
The number of vertices depend of your export from your 3D app, it won’t change in the engine. Don’t be afraid to make prop with a big amount of polys, the engine can easily eat them 
The real limited factor is the number of draw call for each model. Of course don’t do models with 50 millions tris My 2 cents…