Oh god maaaaaaaaaaaath.
I'm running a Skull and Shackles game and have a group of pirates on the high seas. The issue is one of them isn't a pirate..., she's a merchant. And it's both interesting and adorable to see her play the trading mini game from port to port but...
I have no idea how to run this. Trade goods are listed but not all of them, lumber for example doesn't seem to have a price tag. And I'm quite unsure how to run/ask for skill checks(Diplomacy or Apprisal?)
The other issue is I'd rather not let her spiral out of control on money generation but at the same time I'm looking at economy(Yes we can poke fun at it elsewhere) of the given prices and going "Wait how'd you make money off this anyway". This is also the player that will loot the ENTIRE monster if they can, not just the treasure(We're talking bones, meat, scales, etc)
Currently I'm looking through the Isles of the Shackles book to see what each island might demand and raising the prices accordingly for trade goods but if people have experience in this type of player, let me know.
FYI, we play digitally so most the trades are done out of game on Discord so this isn't a huge problem of taking up time mid session.
Unless she is mainly acting as a fence for the other PCs, I am not sure how you reconcile their approaches. And even then she would have to put some distance between herself and the other PCs to do it -- at which point she puts herself at the mercy of pirate hunters and competing pirates.
Well, you could offer her (?) something else. If she rolls high enough on Appraise (or Profession (Merchant) or Diplomacy, as you like), she can buy for a bit less respective sell for a bit more. I'd keep it to 10% difference - this way she can contribute to the group's success without keeping you busy between the sessions.
If she wants to sell lumber or monster parts, I'd simply make up numbers for that - but they will be low, like a few gold pieces.
The easy solution is 1d10% gross profit on each transaction.
A more in depth solution would involve modelling supply and demand at a coarse level, say +/- 1d20% base price. That could be further enriched with a form of social combat from Ultimate Intrigue to add +/- 1d10% to the base price depending on the victor.
Expeditious Retreat's Silk Road has hundreds of trade goods as well as volumes and masses for each.
Unless she is mainly acting as a fence for the other PCs, I am not sure how you reconcile their approaches. And even then she would have to put some distance between herself and the other PCs to do it -- at which point she puts herself at the mercy of pirate hunters and competing pirates.
Thus far the team hasn't been really big on raiding anything and everything and the two pirate vessels they have shacked, she's kinda taken over the loot that wasn't 100% lootalbe/usable. LIke the gang gets all the swords and weapons and those get vendored off but she tends to take the more bulk goods.
Put a different way, at this point they're kinda pirates who pirate the pirates and she's the friendly merchant that they travel with.
The easy solution is 1d10% gross profit on each transaction.
A more in depth solution would involve modelling supply and demand at a coarse level, say +/- 1d20% base price. That could be further enriched with a form of social combat from Ultimate Intrigue to add +/- 1d10% to the base price depending on the victor.
Expeditious Retreat's Silk Road has hundreds of trade goods as well as volumes and masses for each.
I'm rolling around with the idea of percentage dice as mark ups, depending on the demand for each island(I actually have note cards drawn up).
Social Combat.... I can look into that.
I think one thing you need to bring up to your player is how going outside the bounds of normal wealth can break the game, at least for that character. Wealth is simply another power track, like experience.
I'd ask the player if they were okay with it mostly being an RP action that she's trading in port, and using that trade to pay for the ship, the crew, repairs, additional ships, etc.
Explain otherwise, you're going to have to balance out the wealth she generates by reducing the wealth they acquire from other sources to compensate.
I don't think the wealth aspect is that significant unless huge amounts of trade goods are involved and then the risk of a loss of cargo comes into play. The treasure that would normally be granted by defeating a creature instead becomes the profit secured by not losing the cargo.
I don't think the wealth aspect is that significant unless huge amounts of trade goods are involved and then the risk of a loss of cargo comes into play. The treasure that would normally be granted by defeating a creature instead becomes the profit secured by not losing the cargo.
Not to mention the social doors that might open up when she and thus the PCs float into port with a bunch of freshly pinched wine.
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I’m not sure how far into the AP you are, but from back when I ran it, in books 2 and 3 it was very easy for the party to bimble around the Shackles looting places for money and potentially becoming richer in WBL than the game expects. However it was easy to absorb a lot of that into outfitting ships, homes, and throwing plunder around.
Going outside the normal bounds of wealth can break the game IF the party are able to buy appropriate magic items to boost their stats. You as GM are perfectly at liberty to say that there’s a limited supply of such items available, and instead gently nudge the party towards throwing money at non-magical treasures (ship upgrades), or ‘quality of life’ magic items that won’t have an impact on combat stats.
I did some poking around on the google machine, and the best resource I found was Grain into Gold. I obviously didn't read the whole thing, I just read the sample and a few reviews from other people who used it, and this book addresses a lot of what you're looking for. Obviously, this is 3rd party material and not per any established rules.
stepping outside WBL is only a problem with the enhancement items, I mean it's not going to break the game to have 100 galleons or 20 +5 swords. And since, you the GM control access to any and everything, you can control who gets what, when and where.
Use the Automatic Progression Bonus from Unchained and WBL becomes obsolete really.
The simplest would just be to make a Profession check and just say that takes care of everything involved. If going a more involved route though, I definitely make sure they are paying all the costs associated with such a trade however, dock and warehouse workers to load/unload and secure, duties, tariffs, taxes, etc...
For something simple when merchanting trade goods from port to port, I'd probably figure out the base price for a commodity/good at the current port of call depending on scarcity/desirability of the commodity in question. Then let them roll a Profession check and increase that base price by a % equal to their check. So if lumber is going for 1 gp per pound lets say and they roll a 25, then they could get get 1 gp, 2 sp and 5 cp per pound of lumber (a 25% increase).
It's true that instituting Automatic Bonus Progression, and disallowing the crafting of any sort of custom magic item can be all you really need in terms of preventing higher levels of wealth from being a problem (because they no longer buy higher power levels).
You just have to make sure you pay attention to all the different bonuses that are no longer available on items and make sure players are aware that those are gone from items they may have previously existed on.
For example, a Cord of Stubborn Resolve would no longer provide any constitution bonus, but it would still provide it's other effects.
You can decide whether to subtract the cost of a belt of con +2 from the overall price of the cord to adjust the price for the effect, but not all items are so straightforward to do a price adjustment on.