profession skill - merchant and selling loot


Advice


Just wondering how people handle selling loot if a PC has Profession (Merchant)or some other applicable skill? Is it unreasonable to have the PC sell the item(s) at 100% of value? Maybe 75% of value if they have not set up shop? I'm not even sure what the DC of the roll should be to sell items for more than 50%, but I do think the PC should be rewarded for investing skill ranks into his profession. This is clearly not for PFS, and I am looking for advise, not rules (unless there are rules for handling this situation that I've overlooked).

Dataphiles

Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Ultimate Campaign will be able to help out out there when it comes out.

As a GM i am really careful how I management economics in the game. For the most part my games avoid it.

When we ran the Kingmaker AP i let them have at it but all sales we default at 25%. I can break down all the mechanics I had setup but there was a lot of downtime between adventures and a lot of custom rules.

If you don't do this then the party wealth can get really high and beyond the expected level which is OK if your will to change many things to challenge the PC's


I tend to use the profession skills as applying bonus skill points to another skill related to that activity. So you could add it appraise, bluff, sense motive and/or diplomacy as appropriate when determining the value of goods being bought or sold.


I know its crazy, but its unrealistic for someone to buy or sell goods at the same costs as everyone else if they are skilled at haggling, have the appropriate connections, is a trader/merchant by profession, etc. I don't want to unbalance anything, I was thinking +/- percentage equal to the total pluses of the character's profession - merchant skill to buy and sell items. So this character would buy items for a little less and sell for a little more. Think this works? If he wanted to really make a profit, he could set up shop and become an NPC.

Dataphiles

Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

You you wanted to you could "create" a haggling skill or use a existing one but I recommend a new one to make it a skill point sink and then make it a passive skills (As in don't roll dice and assume a take the 10 option)

I suggest this as you don't want people to slow a game down while haggling the cost of 4 master work long swords and 4 master work chain shirts (slightly used) that the party "found" while adventuring.


It would require some work to convert, but there is a fairly good abstract trading system in the old Traveller "Merchant Prince" supplement.

Its not a perfect fit, but as a starter, it'll give you something to work with.


The profession skill state that you can earn half your check per week (8hours a day)
So, look at the char in question, take 10, multiply 0.5 and you know how much loot he can sell per avg. week...

Liberty's Edge

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Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

I can think of a couple ways you could handle this that seem pretty simple.

I think the easiest (and most unbalancing) way to do it would be to apply the normal Profession rules as a bonus to money earned when selling gear. Basically, instead of quickly selling to another business or shopkeeper for the standard 50%, the PC hawks her wares in the street over the course of a week. At the end of the week, the PC rolls Profession and gets half her total as a bonus on top of the 50% value of the goods. Depending on what she's selling and the quantity, you might rule the extra money is in SP or CP or even PP instead of GP (selling a single 1GP dagger might net an extra 12 silver instead of 12 gold for instance.)

Option two is more passive. For every 4 ranks in Profession: Merchant (or possibly even Diplomacy,) the PC gets an increase of 5% to the amount of money they can earn from selling gear. At 5% every 4 ranks, a level 20 PC will get 75% of the item's value. Alternately, you could use the total modifier instead of ranks. If you do that, I'd probably go with a ratio of one 5% increase for every +5 skill modifier. At level 1, a PC could easily have a 10% bonus to money earned that way. Just beware of PC earnings getting too high. A character who really dedicates herself to the Profession skill could quickly exceed the typical Wealth by Level for PCs.

Lantern Lodge

Ahh i remember doing this with an old DM of mine. I turned his game into Sims Business pretty much. My Wizard set up a Magic shop in the local city selling his items for 100% value but had to pay for advertising, building, utilities, guard bribes, king's tax, maintenance, and a few other things that i vergot because it was so long ago. Not to mention to sell the items i had to make several checks being Profession, Diplomacy, Sense Motive, and Perception checks to sell the items and to make sure some one was not trying to steal items. Btw the spell that really save this character cash was Make Whole. It allowed me to buy broken, used, bad condition items from others for dirt cheap then real sell it hand over fist back to the masses. The character eventually was retired sadly but i made a killing on the character and outfitted the "adventurers" nicely to claim me gear and charged them a rental fee for my wears.


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Skill challenge! Make a couple different rolls for appraisal, diplomacy, profession (merchant), and craft or knowledge as appropriate. Each success gains you +5% to the cost, and award xp = to CR (character lvl)

DCs should be equal to 10 + 1/2 character lvl + 1/2000gp.

Other than that, I think Zipper has the right idea for how this is intended to work.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber

Whoops. I meant to write the first method was the "least unbalancing."


I recently wrote a guest article on the Iron Tavern blog on this very subject:
Selling Expensive Loot

It covers finding prospective buyers and simple haggling rules, among other things.

PC's with Profession (Merchant) have a huge advantage when haggling over the selling price.


The fundimental problem is its trying to apply rl logic to what is essentially a deliberate game mechanic to control how much treasure players acumulate.


We always sell loot at 50% the market value. Wouldn't be unreasonable to let them add their profession merchant ranks to the percent, max they'd get is 70% value at level 20 (20 ranks + 50%)


I think you could use Profession (Merchant) to "haggle" over the price, but diplomacy, bluff, and intimidate could all potentially work as well (with varying degrees of side effects of course). What I typically do though is make it an opposed roll. If a high Dip character wants to negotiate with the local blacksmith when selling the slightly used goods he has "acquired" then have them make opposed rolls. The degree to which the player beats the blacksmith then defines the amount of added value he receives. Alternatively, you could even just have the character roll and judge the amount of added value by how well he rolls (instead of an opposed roll).

One thing to keep in mind with profession though, I have always assumed (and could be wrong) that the X gp per week was meant to convey that the PC is selling his/her skills/wares/etc. directly to the consumer. (One of the reasons it takes a full week). A PC (even one with Profession - Merchant) isn't going to get 100% from another merchant unless that merchant intends to keep it for herself. After all, the npc merchant needs to make money too. Finally, even assuming that the PC is selling directly to the consumer, you will need to take into account where she is setting up shop. A small fishing village is unlikely to have anybody who is able to afford a 10,000 gp sword for example.

Long story short: I think its perfectly acceptable to allow a PC to substitute an appropriate profession skill for the "traditional" haggling skills. As others have said though, be careful with your game's economy. It can very quickly get out of hand.

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