How do wandering merchants survive?

[quindia]

And where do all these level 15 merchants come from? If, as you say, all merchants should be level 15, then there were no level 14 merchants to level up. What were they doing before level 15? Adventuring? Because, evidently, they were not inkeepers, blacksmiths, or bakers.

People are saying that only the merchant you're PC's deal with is high level, carries magic items, and enough cash to buy the same from players. That was the same kind of answer I got when I asked what happens when PCs figure out the merchant has more loot than the monsters in the dungeons too.

It is a totally gamist device and the explanations are same kind I get every time I have a problem with the direction of 4e. I am looking forward to getting the books and running a campaign, but it will depend on how much of this stuff I can ignore and still make the game work as to whether or not the campaign will continue.

 

[vagabundo]

Which has nothing to do with "the rules underpin the world".

But they are bundling the rules with an implied setting. Teasing that out into something believable is to be expected.

 

[hong]

But they are bundling the rules with an implied setting. Teasing that out into something believable is to be expected.

I see this as a compromise between 1) the world is a scary, dangerous place; and 2) being able to convert your bling into powerups.

In the abstract, I consider the hefty markup as representing the fact that it's a buyer's market: you may find a +1 sword, but people who want it and are able to use it may be few and far between. (Recall that items now have level prerequisites, and while I haven't seen any hard-and-fast rules governing how these interact with levelless NPCs, it seems reasonable to say that most people won't beable to use items.)

A more strict implementation might be that you have to hang on to your items until a suitable buyer comes along, which might be an X% probability per session where X is really small. But that's rather tedious, and possibly annoying. So instead the game lets players sell their stuff whenever they want, but the price they pay is that they have to accept whatever markup the merchant wants to charge. It's a convenience premium, to allow people to get on with the game.

 

[Piratecat]

People are saying that only the merchant you're PC's deal with is high level, carries magic items, and enough cash to buy the same from players. That was the same kind of answer I got when I asked what happens when PCs figure out the merchant has more loot than the monsters in the dungeons too.

Okay, I'm absolutely having a bad guy who turns out to be the local merchant. He's been feeding weapons to the monsters in the area, leading to more turmoil. More turmoil means more adventurers, which means more business. The adventurers kill the monsters, sell the weapons to the merchant, who sells them back to the monsters again.

Good lord, it's brilliant.

And it gives me a reason to have a solo villain loaded down with magic and loot...

 

[Delgar]

Okay, I'm absolutely having a bad guy who turns out to be the local merchant. He's been feeding weapons to the monsters in the area, leading to more turmoil. More turmoil means more adventurers, which means more business. The adventurers kill the monsters, sell the weapons to the merchant, who sells them back to the monsters again.

Good lord, it's brilliant.

And it gives me a reason to have a solo villain loaded down with magic and loot...

Can you just imagine the look on your players faces when they realize...Hey wait didn't we sell that exact sword just last month, wait and that ring, and that cloak...Hey what's going on here!!

 

[DSRilk]

I'm not real keen on the travelling merchant thing. Then again, I've never been keen on the idea that there was a trade in magic items at ALL, nor on the idea that PCs rake in tons of gold. I like it when a magic item is something special that a character would never consider giving away - it would be something that gets passed down in the family for generations, and when gold is something they get just enough of to get an occasional fancy meal. My method for getting around balance issues and making the characters feel special and cool without the money is as follows:

Instead of money, the characters earn fame. They don't need tons of coin, because everyone wants to put them up and help them out. This also fits the transient nature of the adventurer. And when they go to a place that doesn't know of them, they get to dabble in that feeling of no longer getting what they want just because they're rich.

Instead of hordes of magic items, I give powers. Characters will on rare occasion get a magic item. In 3.x I gave them special powers every level or two that fit with their "destiny". In 4e this all becomes MUCH easier for me, which I'm REALLY looking forward to. Magic items won't have +1 - +5, instead the characters will gain an extra +1 to their level bonus at levels 3, 7, 11, 15, and 19 (that might change after I see the books, but its the current plan -- plus I don't plan on going into the 21+ zone). Additionally, because items have actual powers now, each player will get a "weapon-like" power every other level to compensate for the lack of magic items (from their fate, destiny, training, what-have-you).

Honestly, this is my favorite thing by FAR about 4e -- the ability to flex the magic item quantity really easily.

 

[D.Shaffer]

People are saying that only the merchant you're PC's deal with is high level, carries magic items, and enough cash to buy the same from players. That was the same kind of answer I got when I asked what happens when PCs figure out the merchant has more loot than the monsters in the dungeons too.

...Were you ignoring the other answers that didnt rely on high level merchants? Those were given too. I'd point to the parallels of real merchant routes through history, as most of RL history can be considered a POL setting.

Traveling Merchants are a great device to limit magic item selling and buying. Nothing in the article implies that merchants have a full stock of magical items that they'll happilly sell to the PCs. Nothing says a merchant HAS to have the cash to buy it immediately. If you dont want a merchant to carry item X, it's easy to say 'No, he doesnt have that. Here's a SMALL list of the noteable items he has." If you dont want them to be able to buy magic items, they dont have enough gold to buy it or they offer a price so small no PC's going to accept it. It's a wonderful DM tool.

 

[Wombat]

In a word, D&D has zero to do with reality.

We have a supposedly medieval setting, but we have vast amounts of social mobility and a money-based economy. We have obvious genetic (or divine) superiority in characters, as opposed to most npcs. We have vast amounts of magic with little thought of what this might do to economies or even castle design. We have large numbers of amazingly complex underground defence installations with traps (and their ilk) that are not only beyond the engineering talents of the people at the time, but also stay in smooth operating order even after having been abandoned for centuries, if not decades. We have a multiplicity of sentient non-human species, yet there is no theological discussion on this point nor is there any prejudice against them. There are horrible monsters that simply wander the countryside looking for individuals to eat, yet somehow it is easy to get food anywhere you go.

As I said, D&D and reality are about as far removed from each other as possible.

If you like the game, great! Don't try to make it into an economic or sociological study, though -- you will be disappointed.

 

[Hussar]

Because that's what DMs do. They build the world and game for the players to play though. Without that, all you have are modules, and those get boring fast.

Funny, I thought DM's created adventures for the players to play through. The "world" is something that DM's do in their spare time that has little or nothing to do with the actual game being played.

When the setting is poorly built around "That sounds cool!" over "That's actually vaguely plausible," the DM's workload rises exponentially. Which is REALLY ironic, because I see a lot of the pro-4e people going "Awesome, now I don't have to worry about things like realism or rules!"[\quote]

Yet Star Wars remains one of the most profitable movies ever made.

The more time I spend on this board, the happier I am with my group. They actually pay attention to DMing and do it themselves, and all of us have a good appreciation for a well built setting...which must be INCREDIBLY rare.

A well built setting is great and all. But, it's the well built adventure that gets me going. Then again, I have never really gotten into setting porn. You want to build imaginary worlds? Knock yourself out. But, please, stop forcing the rest of us to do so as well.

 

[noffham]

Three ideas off the top of my head:
1. Nobody wins if nothing new or necessary gets to their location. Merchants are by "unspoken agreement" left alone by all intelligent beings so that critical supplies are kept available. (Perhaps a variant of strong hospitality taboos?)

2. Instead of regular fairs which draw in several independent merchants from place to place, the "fairs" are vast travelling caravan trains with actual military units of guards, scouts, etc. trading, buying and selling in huge years-long trips around the country (or world).

3. Merchant houses are really vast networks of independents or franchises each of which only faces a small segment of the dark wider world and passes the goods along from one to the other. Merchant houses become the de facto banks and financial networks as well as spy and diplomatic services.

Really the "problem" is just another good excuse for being creative, no?