Morbidsoul's page

The merchant's profit is already accounted for in the fact that the item's book cost is normally twice the cost to make the item. A merchant makes a +1 sword for 1,000 gp and sells it at 2,000gp for a 1,000gp profit - or splits the profit with a crafter. Mundane items created using the craft skill have a materials cost of 1/3 book price.

Of course, some of that "profit" might go to non-materials costs like maintaining a shop, or security if the merchant's stock is particularly valuable, so not all of the 1,000gp earned on a +1 sword goes into the merchant's and/or crafter's pocket. But the profit exists somewhere in the 2x to 3x markup between the crafting cost and the book price for the item. The book price is supposed to be the price items are normally sold at.

You do bring up a good point that I never really thought of, but if I were to change it at this point in the campaign it would seem weird. Something to keep in mind for the next one for sure though.

To be honest though, I'm pretty generous with the amount of gold the group receives, so it hasn't been an issue as of yet.

I allow my players to use a diplomacy check to haggle with any merchants. I typically mark up all items by a percentage depending on the size of the city/town and the type of shop.

For example, one of my players enters a magic shop in a large city and wants to buy s somewhat rare item that costs 10,000 gold. I initially mark up the item 150% (30% for large city and 20% for rare item) so the base price is 15,000 gold. Now I have the player roll his diplomacy against the shop keepers appraise. For every 5 points the player beats the shopkeepers role I take 5% off the price to a minimum of 110% of the items book cost (the merchant needs to make some money after all).

It may sound a bit tedious, but it goes really fast and my players love the chance to try and have the face in the group get their items at a discount.

Keep in mind this is all homebrew rules though. I am not aware of any official rules on haggling.

Atarlost and El Ronza are correct. I work in the publishing/printing industry and when binding a book they typically have to have pages divisible by 4 or 8 depending on how it is bound and the size of the book. It is industry standard to put filler on any extra pages instead of just leaving them blank, so promoting a new book they they will be releasing in the future is 100% acceptable.

I mean really, did the OP just post this to cry about nothing, or just to be a troll?

Brilliant ideas so far guys. I really like the idea of making other objectives more important than killing the BBEG. I'm going to share this with my co-gm right away.

So here is my situation...

I run a bi-weekly homebrew campaign with another co-gm for a player base of 8 people. The biggest problem we have is coming up with encounters that are a challenge to the group, but not so overpowering that six out of the eight would end up dead.

here is my current party group:
Dual-Cursed Oracle of Nature - 3rd level
Merciful Healer Cleric - 4th level
Ranger (ranged path and wolf animal companion) - 4th level
Ranger (ranged path and constrictor snake animal companion) - 4th level
Sorcerer (Infernal Bloodline) - 4th level
Inquisitor - 4th level
Cavalier (Dragon Order) - 4th level
Barbarian - 5th level

All were made using the 20 point build.

I recently did an audit of everyone's character sheets and all stats/attacks/damage/etc. is correct.

As an example of an encounter, when they were all level 3 I put them against 4x Dark Creepers, 2x Dark Stalkers and 1x Dark Slayer, for a total CR of 8 against their ECL of 5.

The party completely blew threw them, even with the darkness and deeper darkness (the party was smart enough to drop sunrods, and even that little bit of dim light helped them immensely). There was one player death on the final explosion of the last dark stalker, but that was because he was down to 3 con from a previous encounters poison.

Is there any way that I can build encounters to challenge this group without just totally exploiting their weaknesses? Should I use max HP for all creatures I bring in? Any other help would be greatly appreciated as I'm fairly new to running a group this large.

The way I'd rule it at my table is either

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That sounds about exactly what I was going for. Thank you very much for the ideas and work you put into this.

15RP on the dot.

That's perfect!

Here's another question for you, and half-constructs in general. Do they age or die from natural causes in your opinion?

The race I am trying to create were created by an ancient race that has long since been extinct in my world. When others stumbled upon this world through a nexus gate, they found this race of semi-clockwork magical humanoid creatures.

In my mind they have existed and lived in the ruins of their creators for at least 1000 years. Do you think that would be feasible?

Out of curosity (and if I missed it in your post after re-reading, I'm sorry) but about how many RP would this race cost per the ARG? I was working on a similar playable race for a homebrew campaign, but was trying to keep it within the 10-15 RP value as to not completely make it over powered to the rest of the core races.