Haggling Rules

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Here are my new haggling rules. I'll use an example of the party selling items to a merchant.

1. An item's baseline selling price is 50% of its value.

2. Only one negotiation can take place in any given settlement (to prevent endless haggling). It is assumed that the player has found the "best" buyer in town.

3. Buyer (merchant) makes Profession - Merchant or Sense Motive check opposed by seller's (player) Profession - Merchant or Bluff check.

4. If buyer loses, seller gets 100% of item's value. If buyer wins, buyer can make a counteroffer.

5. Counteroffer. The roles are now reversed, so the merchant makes the Profession - Merchant or Bluff check and the player makes a Profession - Merchant or Sense Motive check. If the merchant wins, the player can get 50% of the item's value. If the player wins, the player can get 75% of the item's value.

6. The seller may keep the item and walk away at any time (but cannot attempt to sell it again in that settlement, except at 50% value).

Notes: I didn't use Diplomacy b/c I don't think it fits (as per the description in the PH). There may be other skills that could be used in place of the ones I listed, but I think I've used the most appropriate for most situations. You might allow Craft in place of Profession. Perhaps 5 ranks of Gather Info could give a +2 synergy bonus. The only way the player can get more than 100% is under exceptional circumstances (the player wins the opposed roll by 20+), so as to maintain the campaign's wealth levels (it's easier to give more then take away). I've also assumed both the buyer and seller know the true value of the item. If not, then the % offered could be slightly different.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Initial Thoughts..

How about,

Start with Assumed value, have the seller roll an Appraise check to determine what they think the value of the item is. This is the price that would be on the price tag if they use one.

Begin the haggling at 80% of the assumed value.

A successful bluff check can grant a +2 bonus to the opposed skill check.
A successful Appraise check of DC 15 can grant a +2 bonus to the opposed check if the sellor has overpriced the item.

Make an opposed skill check for either Prof -X or Craft -X using either 2D10 or just 1D10. Profession skills cannot be used untrained, but for this check you could make an untrained check with a -4 penatly.

Determine the amount succeded by and that side gets 5% advantage per point. The price cannot drop below 40% and cannot go above 120%.
[Basically capping the advantage at +8]

fx, Fred and Wilma haggle over a carpet remanent. Fred thinks it worth 100gp. The opposed check ends up as Fred with 15 and Wilma with 19. Wilma 'won' by 4 points, so the carpet gets sold for 60 gp [4*5=20% advantage subtracted from the base of 80%]
Had Wilma known that Fred was overpricing, her result would have been 21 and would have gotten the carpet for 50gp.

Downside, people like me will need a calculator handy. PC's can gain higher values from loot.
Upside, characters skill investment is much more important than lucky rolls. True appraisal of the item is important, as opposed to just looking it up in the book.

Of course, after typing all this and drinking more caffiene... your method is pretty cool. I would use the bluff/sense motive to modify the skill roll and use the relevant profession or craft skill instead of a new skill.

 

[Anabstercorian]

This is a very nice bit of design. Kudos!

 

[Kax Tuglebend]

personally i would go with a base of the buyers Charisma x5, maybe averaged if its a PC party (eg: better for a Cha14 elf to go to the merchants alone than take the Cha6 half-orc) with maybe 3 opposed rolls ala Al-Qadim, each roll shifting the say.. 5 or 10% in the winners favour, oh with modifiers to the base depending on the supply & demand (eg: buying a sword from a merchant near the remains of a massive battle with lots of looting would be maybe -25% whereas buying it from a merchant in a city with a ban on all weapons would be +25%)

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

We playtested the rule today with a heap load of buying and selling and I must say it worked out really well (if I do say so myself ).

It was a very simple and intuitive ruleset and things flowed quickly (which is what I was after). The only calculations involved were 50%, 75%, or full market value (all of which are easy to calculate).

In the beginning, the P said let's just sell it all in one shot. I said fine, but you'll only get 50% market value. So they haggled. End result was that they got probably 90% full value with some interesting role-playing developments over an item that the P totally kicked butt on (they got 125% value) and another that the merchant wouldn't offer more than 25% value. Another interesting development was over an item the P had misappraised; the merchant wouldn't offer what the P had won in the opposed skill checks; so the P knew somebody was wrong in their appraisal but they didn't know if it was them or the merchant (it was an inexpensive item so they sold it anyways).

The ruleset seems to work really well as a quick and dirty means of haggling. We had a couple minor modifiers: -2 for the bluffing character (due to his race being a kender) and +2 aid another bonuses from characters who had pertinent knowledge to the item in question.