Hi All
One of my players really wants to develop his character as a merchant (almost as a background but to help drive plots etc). Does anyone know of any good merchant rules out there that includes rules for trading etc ?
Regards...
|
I've seen one or two Merchant classes on forums here and there, but I don't think your player is going to think that's appealing for adventuring. The big issue with any merchant rules that actually make sense and let you make a profit can tend to a) make it even more obvious how unrealistic the game's economy is and b) break the WBL guidelines.
It's really not hard, though, to look at the trade goods and decide what regions of the world might have more scarce supplies and which might have more abundant supplies of a particular good. Then just adjust the prices a little keeping in mind the distance between high and low points to make it plausible that someone might want to run a caravan or shipping lane between them.
If you want actual rules to give you hard guidelines, you have the following options (unless I'm missing some great mercantile sourcebook out there):
1) You can simply have them use Profession (Merchant). The profit will be meager and it won't feel at all like being a merchant/trader, but it's an option.
2) You might want to take a look at A Magical Society: Silk Road. It's written for 3.5/OGL, but should be applicable to PFRPG just fine. Not only is it a wealth of information about all sorts of trade routes, but it has pretty good rules for trade goods. Excellent book for a trade-centered campaign.
3) It's broken beyond belief, but the DMG2 for 3.5 had rules for running a business. This might work for a merchant with a shop, but won't really cut it if you wanted a travelling merchant caravan or ship.
Trade Routes: Expanded Caravan Rules is a decent ruleset on running a caravan if he wants to be on overland trader, though that doesn't really cover any of the actual merchant/trader parts.
It's 3.5, but there's EN Guilds: Merchant Guild, which might have some useful information on merchant guilds. I don't have this one, though, so I can't speak of its utility.
Dot.
Expeditious Retreat Press published Silk Road. It's a great resource on trading and building upon the D&D/PF economy. While published under the 3.5 OGL, everything in it can be used as is in Pathfinder.
Interestingly, if you want to use Jade Regent's caravan rules but overcome its trading-rules flaws, the unit of cargo/trade goods is equivalent between the two works.
Thanks all for the help - very very much appreciated. I shall check out all the suggestions.