so i want to be a traveling merchant

[lock wood]

so i'm playing a merchant have ranks in the profession. spent 2500 gp for wagons horse. etc. joined a merchants guild

the guild will sell me goods at a lower prices then i take them to towns and sell them.

sounds great but after every thing is said and done i have to make money theirs tax, travel cost, have to pay npc/pc etc my gm want to keep it easy so i was want to know if there was a formula out there for this. in any of the books to make it easy

also their could be the problem with me having a higher gold % then the rest of the group they to are picking up professions but its still a possibility as i should make more as i have invested a lot in to unlike the blacksmith who is just going to the towns local black smith and working for him as a work hand.\

so if i buy 500 worth of goods at lets say 60% book prices and i can sell them at 90% book price what should i net what should be my profit after all bills are payed?

this seems low when i brake it down for gross profit any input would help

[LordKailas]

You could look at the downtime rules for running a business. Treat your wagon as a structure with the appropriate modifications and just go from there.

[lock wood]

that a great idea and i will look in to that that in the Ultimate Campaign. right

[LordKailas]

lock wood wrote:

that a great idea and i will look in to that that in the Ultimate Campaign. right

yes, a wagon could probably be treated as a 6 block building that consists of a storage area and a store front (basically a store without the office or lavatory rooms).

Glancing over the rules, it looks like such a "building" would give you a +15 to your profession check and a +2 bonus to gp. You would earn money equal to

((your check)/10)+2 gp

So, if you had a +5 and you took 10, you would get

((30)/10)+2 = 5gp per day.

[lock wood]

LordKailas wrote:

lock wood wrote:

that a great idea and i will look in to that that in the Ultimate Campaign. right

yes, a wagon could probably be treated as a 6 block building that consists of a storage area and a store front (basically a store without the office or lavatory rooms).

Glancing over the rules, it looks like such a "building" would give you a +15 to your profession check and a +2 bonus to gp. You would earn money equal to

((your check)/10)+2 gp

So, if you had a +5 and you took 10, you would get

((30)/10)+2 = 5gp per day.

that could work with 2 wagons i would make 10gp a day or 300 gp in 30 days with is how long the trip from town to town takes

[Meirril]

The downtime rules get cumbersome, but you certainly make a profit. Basically buy each wagon as a single room, like a Storage. Then buy the NPC handlers as a Team. Like a driver per cart. You could also hire some extra NPCs to represent other labor you've got. Like a sales person who handles sales from your wagons when you're out adventuring or making deals with other merchants. Depending on who that person is will be what resources you could earn. I'd suggest an Acolyte and a few guards. That way you can earn a magic resource and some additional goods.

Now for what it actually does. While you can just earn gold, its the slowest way to gain wealth. Instead you want to earn resources. Earning resources lets you buy generic goods at half price. The big one is earning magic resources because they are the most expensive (thus most profit) but also because you can spend them for having magic items produced. You can also use goods for that, but since goods are 20gp each and magic is 100gp each, buying magic is faster.

Stupidly, if you have each wagon represent a different business you'll make more. 1 storage, 1 driver, 1 guard and 1 acolyte can earn gold, labor, goods, influence and magic as a team with +8 in bonuses to split between them. If you want to max it out you always take 10 and assign an even +10 to anything you want more of, then +1 to anything else you want and finally dump odd bonuses into gold. This way you could get an opportunity to buy 1 labor, 1 good, 1 influence, 1 magic and 1g 4s per day. Influence is kind of hard to spend, so you might earn it to take care of taxes or just pocket the extra 1s from the bonus. Maybe the same for labor.

If you pool the 2 wagons and the people running each together the total bonus would be +16, which you could use +10 to get an extra good and pass the rest of the bonuses around to get 1 of each. So 2 magic, 1 labor, 1 influece, 1 good, and 1g 3s in cash. Acting as 2 seperate +8 businesses you'd get opportunities to buy 2 labor, 2 goods, 2 influence, 2 magic, and 2g 8s in cash. Stupid system, eh?

Again you buy the resources. The profit is generated when you spend them. So if you want to buy some armor you spend Goods, maybe Labor, and if the GM is generous Influence (influence is usually used for Cha related stuff, not physical items), and Magic if the armor is Enchanted.

As for getting gold out of this system instead of just infinitely collecting goods, figure you can sell enough goods in any settlement equal to its sales value per day. Or maybe half that. Talk to the GM. Also consider paying for a Manager so your caravan doesn't decide to leave town and continue without you when you disappear for a month into a hole in the ground...

Oh, and don't forget that if you use the Downtime system events should happen. Most bad, because otherwise you just steadily earn income.

[Claxon]

I would strongly suggest talking to your GM about how they want to run things...

As an example if I were you're GM I would tell you that for your in combat resources you can only have normal WBL, so you should be aware that you're investing in RP only stuff that isn't going to be mechanically beneficial.

[CrystalSeas]

There is also a set of rules for wagons and caravans in the Jade Regent Players Guide

Granted, those didn't work out as well as staff expected, but you might read through them and get some ideas you could incorporate.

[lock wood]

thank you for the rules in jade regent players guide more options are all ways good

as for WBL my GM dose not use it but tends to control the item we can find as to keep thing with in the right power levels

after talking about it with my gm he just going to use the rules to make gold noting but that as to keep thing easy

so after looking it all over and taking LordKailas advise on the mater we think we have it worked out thanks for all the input