(Discussion) General Part III

[Uriel]

Suggested new Skill, subject to Creamsteak/Garyh's approval.

Haggling
{Cha} Untrained:Yes
Class skill for all classes.

You are skilled at the art of Trading and may expect to affect the price of items you are selling/buying in the following manner.

Haggling Total

1-5: Not only are the merchants unwilling to buy your item, but you may not attempt to sell it again for a week's time, as you garnered a rather bad name as a Trader, due to your brusk and rude manner.

6-10: 25% Market Value: Your poor trading got you far less than you wanted, you should have taken their original offer.

11-15: 50% Market Value. this is what any sensible merchant expects to pay for things, and his sense wonout over your silver-tongue.

16-20: 75% Market Value. Congratulations, you know when to keep your mouth shut and when to point out the positive features of an item.

21-25: 100% Market Value. Now then,the Merchants could learn a thing or two from you.
Perhaps you are in the wrong Trade,friend...

26-30:125% Market Value. They never knew what hit them.

31-35:150% Market Value. You just made the deal of the century.

36+: 200% Market Value. They should have payed you what you asked for the first time.

Modifiers based upon the availability of the item's type, as well as factors such as a hostile or friendly relation with the other party in the transaction will affect the Deal at the DM's <Judge's> discretion, being a Mod prior to the skill check.

 

[Creamsteak]

I'm preferable to using the Half-Drow = Half Elf with Darkvision instead of Low-Light Vision. I'd rather keep it very simple like that. That's my opinion.

 

[Velmont]

I have another suggestion for the Hagling skill, here it is:

Haggling (Cha)

Trading is an art. It is a discussion between two groups, buyer and sellers, who argue on the price of an item. You must be convincing on your argument, but you must be able to see trought the arguments of your opponent to be able to know hat is a truth and what is an half truth.

Each time you want to sell an item, you must do an opposed Haggling test. The result give how much more the seller can get from an item. The base price the depend on the condition of the item. For newly crafted item, the based price is 100% of the price. For a used item, the based price is 50% of the price. If two players or some roleplay is made, the base price is determine at the moment of the selling. Both opponent must agree for a price, and if one want to haggle, than the roll must be made by both.

The winner choose if he want to raise or lower the price by an amout up to 2% per points he beat his opponent.

Special: Having 5 ranks in Bluff give you +2 synergy bonus to Haggling, as you can be more convincing. If you have 5 ranks in Sense Motive, you get +2 synergy bonus to Haggling, as you can see more easily into opponents arguments.

Haggling can be use untrained and is a class skill abilty to Rogues and Bards. Clerics with the Trickery domain gain Haggling as a class skill.

 

[Arken]

Velmont: whilst I can see why such a skill would fall largely within the remit of bards and rogues there might be a need for it to be accessible equally to all classes due to the fact that trading and selling treasure is really integral to the way the game works. Otherwise anyone wanting to sell treasure would ahve to befriend a bard or rogue and use tham as a middle man. (Which is actually what my character wanted to organise with your character anyway but that's another matter )

 

[Thomas Hobbes]

Perhaps it would be simplest to use Diplomacy, instead of inventing a new skill? What Velmont proposed, for example, is basically diplomacy (Charisma based, available to mostly the same people, synergy from sense motive and bluff) and both description of Diplomacy from the PHB ("etiquette, social grace, tact, subtlety, and a way with words") and the definition of "diplomacy" would seem to make it near-synonymous with bargaining. If diplomacy was used, though, the synergy bonus from Knowledge: Nobility could be switched to one from Appraise.

As for whatever skill is chosen being available to all classes for reasons of balance, I would say that reality (not everyone is a good merchant) should overcome 'balance' in this case- after all, in a living world, I sort of like the idea of someone who makes a living as a middleman (sort of like the trading post- you'll get a better price than you normally would, even after his/her/it's cut).

As a mechanic for “how much,” I would suggest an opposed roll; for every 5 points one roll beats the other, they negotiate it up/down 10% (I seem to recall this is how they do it in Star Wars d20).

 

[Velmont]

Double post...

 

[Velmont]

I understand you Arken, but in that case, that would mean a level 5 character would have a good deal against all level 1 merchants or craftmen. WOrst, a level 5 merchant who have high stats and two feats to raise his skills (Rank:8 + Stat:4 + Synergy:4 + Skill Focus:3 + Dual Skill Feat:2 = 21) would have no chance to have a good bargain against a figther lvl 20 who want to sell a scroll. I find the situation a bit ridiculous, even if there is a difference of 15 levels between the two, I think the figther is not necesserly a good bargainer just because he is a raider and sold his things and wanted to become a good bargainers. He have passed too much time raiding to be as good as a merchant of the same level.

So I think only classes who make sense should have access to the skill, and that mean Rogue and Bard, who are the two more likely merchant class, and the cleric who have access to Trikery Domain (or Trade Domain, if it exist), as this is a domain usually given to cleric who follow merchant gods.

Finally, the idea to use diplomacy instead would make sense too. In my RLs games, we usually use diplomacy, and if you look at the feat negotiator, it gives +2 to diplomacy & Sense Motive. So it could be a diplomacy opposed test or a diplomacy (seller) against sense motive (buyer).

I think any of these three options would be interesting, but I want to know as soon as possible what skill will help trades (if any), as my character is a merchant! (If a new skill will be created, I want to change my feat negociator for Skill Focus(Haggling))

Arken, I'm still interested to do some business with you.

 

[Creamsteak]

1) A skill would make selling to NPCs too profitable for certain characters. They wouldn't want to support the market for PCs to make purchases.

2) Time tracking should be in effect for your character. We keep track of the number of days you've spent out of your allotment. After an adventure, the DM informs me of the number of days that have passed, and should pass that information down to the players after the OK.

3) Selling an item for 50% of it's market price is always possible, but you will need to spend 1 day for every 1000 gold pieces of the item's market price to sell it. Selling a 200,000 gold piece weapon for 100,000 gold pieces will take 200 days out of your character. Not a paltry amount.

How's that sound?

 

[Thels]

Velmont> You're assuming that the Fighter maxed out the Haggling skill. If so, that fighter is trained in merchandising a lot. There's no reason why a fighter couldn't do that. A fighter only has 2 skills/level + int bonus, so it's gonna be expensive on him and most Fighters probably won't take it, stepping to their friend who did put points in there.

CS> Selling an item takes 1 day per 1000 GP? Though that might sound reasonable storywise, gamewise it really sucks. On the trek to the vinyard we got one item that's slightly over 1000 gp at 50%. No one is interested, so that means one of our characters needs to sacrifice 1 day gametime just so we can each get our 200 gp out of it. Later on when 10k items appear, the time players are out of the game, just to sell an item grows insane!

CS> On the halfdrow matter, you really want them to have +2 Diplomacy/+2 Gather Information? Drow are quite different from Elves. Why should Halfdrow be the same as Halfelves? Why not make Halfdrow the same as Halforcs then? Halforcs already have darkvision, so you don't even need to change that and thus it's even simpler.

 

[Creamsteak]

Good point about the half drow skills. I'll have-ta think on that. Maybe just remove it...

But I havn't thoroughly promoted how time in LEW works. Your thinking that your going to have to stop an adventure because a character needs to spend two days to sell an item. That's not the case. Those two days are part of your time in LEW statistic. It informs us judges of whether or not you can join a new adventure this 'period'. I'll explain it in more detail later, laundry calls.