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I'd like to cancel my Adventure Path subscription.

We have tons of material written on JR's four major NPCs. But what about the other two guys?

Sandru's caravan starts with six travelers—Sandru, Koya, Ameiko, Shalelu, and two Varisian brothers named Bevelek and Vankor (additional drivers for the caravan, with Sandru himself serving as the third driver).

I want to spotlight these two characters next session--I think I'll have them get upset and protest that they're being ignored by the rest of the caravan. "You act like we don't even have faces!" Does anyone have any ideas for how to roleplay them from that point on? And especially, does anyone have any good artwork to depict the two?

There's some grumbling over in the conundrum thread that you can't actually make any money with traders. Quite rightly, too. The trader entry is worded so that you can sell 5 units of trade goods on arriving in a settlement, and then have to move on to the next one. You need a lot of modifiers just to break even, and that means diverting resources from other options, like combat prowess--but why give up combat prowess, knowing that you can get money by killing bandits, so that you can make less money and increase the odds of being killed by bandits in turn?

Trading is a trap as written, but there's an obvious fix. Trading is a perfectly viable option if you allow traders to sell cargo from another settlement every day the caravan remains in a settlement, with a limit of five traders working each day. So if you have 10 cargo units of trade goods, you could stay for two days, giving your five traders time to sell all of them.

I've been playing with the numbers for a while, and this actually works so well that I strongly suspect this is how it was intended to work in the first place. Take a look at some of these example caravans:

The towns on the way to Brinewall are Galduria, Wolf's Ear, Roderic's Cove, and (potentially) Riddleport. If a caravan can only sell on arriving in a new settlement, they'll earn 71.5 gp per town. After spending 20 gp for the drivers and 60 gp in eaten/wasted stores on the road, they've earned 206 gp--less than a single battle with bandits. If it's not an bad investment, it's only because the party didn't invest anything.

But if they can sell 15 units of trade goods to sell over the course of three days, they'll earn 214.5 gp per town, and it won't affect their expenses very much. That's 798 gp in trade. They'll probably end up spending more in repairs due to the sacrifice in combat ability, but still, they're making coin for their effort.

With some actual investment, the PCs could try to sell in volume instead.

Obviously you it's dumb to try to make money selling cheap goods when there's a cap on how much you can sell. If this caravan can only sell on arriving in a new settlement, they'll earn 46 gp per town. Just the cost of eating on the road is 260 gp, so they're losing money. They'd be better off without the supply wagons; cargo capacity is irrelevant beyond what you need for food and treasure.

But dumping 45 units of trade goods into a town over nine days will earn 414 gp a town. It'd take two months to reach and sell in all four towns, so paying the six drivers and five traders will cost 220 gp, and eating on the road is still 260 gp, since eating in town is included above.

That means the volume approach will produce 1176 gp. That sounds like a lot, but split five ways, it's really not. The PCs have invested a fair bit into a caravan that's still relatively vulnerable. They'll have to flee from everything (they can't even pick up treasure anyways), which is especially bad because this caravan has very little tolerance for unrest. A run of bad luck could forcing them to give away a lot of trade goods and eat into their margins significantly. In all, the reward matches the risk.

Besides, this caravan is driving down a road of diminishing returns.

You get 156.5 gp for arrival. Monthly wages are 150 gp, and daily consumption costs 12 gp, so they need to hit about three towns a month to break even. At level 10, this is a TOTAL waste of effort. They'll probably never even pay off the extra wagons!

But if they can sell every last unit? After 11 days in town, they'll earn 1721.5 gp, minus some very nebulous expenses. If the towns are reasonably close to each other in Tian Xia you could make okayish amounts of money for their level, especially if we add allied NPCs and bags of holding. However, while your caravan could have guards and points in defense and such, it's still going to be underpowered against random encounters, which are no doubt both far scarier, and far more profitable. Also, you're wasting lots of time in or near the Jade Regent's territory, which might be bad in itself. And there's still no spare room for treasure. I doubt that the high level merchant caravan is still worth it, overall. We've nearly tapped all options to increase profits and there's still a few adventures left to go!

In Summary...

Does this interpretation of caravan trading feel right? Some will sputter "butbutbut market saturation!", but I'm convinced the system is better this way. It rewards the PCs for careful caravan design. It allows the PCs to run a very long supply caravan viably. It lets the PCs make money in a way other than killing monsters and taking their stuff. It prevents the PCs from resenting the caravan as as a drain on resources. It encourages the PCs to stick around in the towns they visit, creating roleplaying opportunities.

And even if you think the strategy starts off a bit too strong, it still gets weaker over time, encouraging the party to eventually even out their stats and balance short-term gains with long-term effectiveness. Really, the biggest problem I see with running it this way is that it's potentially a ton of rolls--in practice I'd just let the party take the average for every trader, as I've assumed in all my math.

Hopefully my math is correct. Or at least not monstrously wrong. I did a ridiculous amount after all. Let me know if you find any mistakes--or ways to significantly improve profits.

Please cancel my AP subscription. Can't say I'm feeling it--maybe I'll have better luck next time.

Here are three alternate stanzas to extend the length of your goblin antics.