Haggling, Pricing, and Reshaping Economies

[knightstar4]

A few topics for discussion...
Haggling, how do you handle it mechanically in your game? So far we've been using opposed diplomacy checks with modifiers being the guideline to modify the base price.

But, how would you handle things as far as pricing for goods in a way that wasn't simply selling at half? Seems awfully odd.

[MacGurcules]

I can understand why the rules only cover things at sell-half. Pathfinder isn't really an economics game. You could get lost in rules to cover all the bases. And the firm 50% guideline is simple and keeps cheesy loopholes to a minimum, especially once you get crafting into the mix.

That said, there's room for a little motion as long as you don't let it get to crazy. My group does something similar to yours but we use an appraise roll since diplomacy already gets a lot of traffic.

[pobbes]

I used to use a simple ten percent rule. The winning party gets to charge (or save) an extra ten percent off the listed price. It worked alright especially for equipment (it gave the face a chance to really be economically useful to the party), but I soon had a "merchant character". He was more concerned with eking out a twenty percent profit margin on trade goods since their value doesn't half when you go to sell it. After that, I started working on a variant that used 5%, but a bit more often.

I used two variables, the items availability and the merchants attitude. Availability ranged from rare (+10%), uncommon (+5%), available (0%), common (-5%), surplus (-10%). This mirrored the attitudes from hostile to helpful with similar benefits/penalties, and they stacked. The system allowed for a few more checks to keep things interesting. A simple appraisal check could get you the PHB price, but you would need other checks to know its availability. Also, merchants could lie about availability to raise the price even if you haggled a discount.

Also, the system rewarded the non-diplomacy characters a little for merchant loyalty. The face could diplomacy anyone to improve their attitude and get a discount, but any party member could befriend a recurring NPC who would always give the accompanying discount "for his friend".