Adventurers making money with profession

[Byronic]

I have a player who plans to make an exotic weapon merchant in a campaign I'm planning.

How would you handle such a thing in your 4.0 chronicle with the new rules?

 

[lukelightning]

There are no rules for professions or crafting.

Personally I'd just treat it as backstory; how does he intend to run a business while adventuring? Take time off while the rest of the party kills things and takes their stuff? Force the rest of the party to sit around idle while he tries to find buyers for a box of katars?

Besides, the income would be negligible compared to treasure.

 

[Celebrim]

There are no rules for professions or crafting.

Personally I'd just treat it as backstory; how does he intend to run a business while adventuring? Take time off while the rest of the party kills things and takes their stuff? Force the rest of the party to sit around idle while he tries to find buyers for a box of katars?

Besides, the income would be negligible compared to treasure.

The number of assumptions about how the game is supposed to be played in that are astounding.

Do you have any answers that aren't "That sounds like badwrongfun."?

Byronic: Mostly, you're going to have handle a merchant campaign the same way you always have - via role play. The rules that could help you where never particularly robust (and generally in Dragon, not core books), and they are generally even weaker in 4e.

4e's skill system is geared toward dungeoneering and its skills are abit overly broad for my taste, but you should still be able to get some servicable haggling skills out of things like diplomacy, insight, bluff, etc. for when you want to have skill checks. Other than that, you are on your own. That's not all bad. It puts the emphasis on the role play, not on the roll play.

 

[Byronic]

There are no rules for professions or crafting.

Personally I'd just treat it as backstory; how does he intend to run a business while adventuring? Take time off while the rest of the party kills things and takes their stuff? Force the rest of the party to sit around idle while he tries to find buyers for a box of katars?

Besides, the income would be negligible compared to treasure.

Well I assume that he's doing it because he finds it entertaining, assume that the rest of the party isn't a problem because they're amused by it as well (they love immersion).

Now, 4th edition philosophy is that things should be fun. However, while this is fun it is not supported. In fact it seems to go against the spirit if not the rule of parcels and the sell at 20% rule.

So I'm wondering what other people are doing in their game with this kind of situation.

 

[Byronic]

Byronic: Mostly, you're going to have handle a merchant campaign the same way you always have - via role play. The rules that could help you where never particularly robust (and generally in Dragon, not core books), and they are generally even weaker in 4e.

4e's skill system is geared toward dungeoneering and its skills are abit overly broad for my taste, but you should still be able to get some servicable haggling skills out of things like diplomacy, insight, bluff, etc. for when you want to have skill checks. Other than that, you are on your own. That's not all bad. It puts the emphasis on the role play, not on the roll play.

I'm curious, do you have any idea which issues of dragon magazine they're in?

*goes looking*

 

[Cadfan]

Depends on the context.

Is he selling weapons that he's recovered from adventuring? Or does he have suppliers (perhaps other adventurers) who sell him things which he then resells? Does he do a lot of volume in nonmagical exotic weapons? Or does he do specialty sales, in which he matches one particular weapon to the ideal buyer, for a large commission?

Lets assume he's buying and selling, and that he's got some volume in small stock that doesn't cost much, but makes his big money with large commission sales.

Don't tell your player this. But I'd just work the money he's earning from the business right into the expected earnings of the party from adventuring. I'd also work the business he's running into the adventures of the party in the same way.

If your player knows this, it creates weird psychological effects. So don't tell him.

But basically, yeah. The minor sales would be good for negligible pocket change, and the big sales would be customized to match the needs of the treasure parcels that the players would normally be looting from goblin strongholds, but are instead earning through operating their business.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I have a player who plans to make an exotic weapon merchant in a campaign I'm planning.

How would you handle such a thing in your 4.0 chronicle with the new rules?

If you expect somewhat of a focus in your game, you should probably consider creating adventures where the Merchant secures trade partners. In this process, he can make more money selling items then usually assumed by RAW.

If you worry about XP vs Wealth, ensure that anything that gets him more money then expected also grants appropriate XP - like using skill challenges and quests.

Bluff, Diplomacy, Insight and Perception should allow you to handle everything in the trading department you care about. Crafting is not supported by RAW, so either you create a skill (maybe just simply "Craft") for it, hand-wave it, or try to implement it with other skills. (Arcana, History and Nature come to mind)

 

[Celebrim]

Now, 4th edition philosophy is that things should be fun. However, while this is fun it is not supported. In fact it seems to go against the spirit if not the rule of parcels and the sell at 20% rule.

So I'm wondering what other people are doing in their game with this kind of situation.

One of my biggest problems with 4e is that the designers have decided on what they think is fun and chosen not to support anything else.

In all honesty, the economics of D&D have always been messed up and 4e just continues that trend - albeit in the wrong direction.

One of the things that could have sold me on 4e was better less gamist economics. It was on my list of 'Things that are broken and need fixing' - all of which were pretty much ignored by the design team who had thier own ideas of what was broken.

Reasonably, the cost you can sell something at is say 40-100% above the cost of production/acquisition depending on how many products are available that could be reasonable replacements for what you sell. Some things can modify that outside of that range. For example, trade goods from the East could be sold in early modern Europe at 200% or 300% markup because of the cost, difficulty, and danger in getting those goods to the end market. On the opposite extreme, highly exchangable and prevelent commodity goods might only have a 10% markup. Once you take into account other expenses (overhead, labor, taxes, etc.), the profit on a transaction is probably much less than the gross markup - probably only a 10th of that.

So lets imagine there is a sword craftsman who is the only skilled craftsman within a day's journey. If he's selling swords for 20gp, it's a good bet that they cost him less than 10gp to manufacture them. But he probably needs that level of markup to run his business, because he doesn't sell swords that often (small market) and in the mean time he's paying the 'labor cost' of a skilled merchant (he expects to live well).

Pretty much, you are just going to have to use some common sense. Just remember the end goal is for the business to only be turning about a 4-10% profit assuming its run well.

 

[Mort_Q]

One of my biggest problems with 4e is that the designers have decided on what they think is fun and chosen not to support anything else.

I think it's more that they wanted to establish a base line for inexperienced DMs.

Small steps.

Let 'em learn to run a straightforward adventure.

Later, if they feel they're up to it, they can adjust their campaign economies to include more complex interactions.

 

[Celebrim]

Don't tell your player this. But I'd just work the money he's earning from the business right into the expected earnings of the party from adventuring. I'd also work the business he's running into the adventures of the party in the same way.

I agree with this. If you are going to run an merchant based adventuring campaign, you are going to have to run 'cash poor' adventures where huge piles of coins aren't just lying around everywhere. If the adventures find treasure, it needs to be smaller than the usually suggested amounts so that they have to keep running the business to acquire the money they expect to.

You also need to keep a distinction between the players total wealth and thier liquid wealth. In a merchant campaign, the total value of the characters ships, warehouses, offices, investments, mines, and who knows what else might greatly exceed thier expected wealth per level. But most of this is assumed not to be liquid, on the grounds that if they did liquidate it and turn it all into personal (magical) possessions - even if that were possible - it would be at a loss and they could not replace it with treasure (because its a cash poor universe).

You might also want to start the game with the players in possession of a variaty of trade goods valued well in excess of thier normal starting wealth. You might also consider starting the campaign with - like the character of Hon Solo in Star Wars - the characters in dept and needing money to pay off loans, or taxes, or whatever. There are variaty of good hooks this opens up obviously - for example, the characters could all begin as members of the same merchant caravan.