what's a poor merchant to do?

[fl8m]

I'm toying with the idea of running an evil campaign, the players have been asking forever and it sounds like a nice change from rescuing the poor villiagers.

unfortunately i've hit a stumbling block, eventually they will go into a town or villiage and either sneakily steal the goods they want or kill/intimidate the merchant into giving them his stuff. I don't really want to stop them from doing this (it's one of the perks of being evil )
but i'm completely clueless as to what defences if any a merchant or town might have.

i can't imagine that in a poor little villiage the 1 general store has a hired guard or anything better than a lock on the door. I'm a little hindered by the fact i imagine high or even mid-level people are rare, so the king is probably a warrior/aristocrat and the merchant is probably an expert. I can't make every merchant an ex-adventurer. I also don't imagine that every high level fighter decides to spend his twilight years as a guard for some city or another.

so who defends the little towns or even the big cities, and how does a merchant make sure that the +4 vorpal blade he bought for 81,000gp doesn't get stolen by a thief or taken by a guy with a big sword and no morals?

 

[philreed]

Well, I'm sure heroic adventuring parties are out there. Maybe they're staying at the local inn the night of the disturbance. I've never seen heroic adventurers pass up a chance to save a village from evil.

For every evil there is a good. You've just turned the tables by stating that the players are evil -- good adventurers still exist and they're still ready to defend the small guys.

 

[Hand of Evil]

The good stuff is always in the back, the curse stuff is up front.

 

[Zappo]

Merchants that trade in magical items are rich. Filthy rich. After all, they deal in stuff which costs tens of thousands of GP; many towns don't have that kind of money. In my campaigns, magic dealers tend to have incredible security - storing items in extradimensional spaces, employing high-level characters as guards (or even monsters), using costly custom-made magical items to prevent theft in any possible way. And if you find a way to peel them, they will put on you a bounty large enough to attract high-level parties.

While this may sound like hosing the PCs, it is really only logical IMO.

 

[fl8m]

wow i feel kind of silly, it's so obvious. thanks zappo. magic item merchants are rich beyond comprehension and money makes up for levels with ease. sure bob the iron rations merchant is outa luck but the guy with the vorpal sword can afford any kind of defense.

any specific ideas for what kind of protections or procautions a mrechant would take? obviously guards, and keeping the high priced goods hidden (extradimensional spaces, just in another building, heck in a dungeon )
but what else specificly? how does the insanely rich lvl 4 expert keep himself alive when the 10th lvl evil barbarian and wizard come sauntering in with murder on thier mind?

 

[Lasher Dragon]

Have some nasty area spell that hits everything on the other side of the counter put on a contingency or in some custom magic item. Merchant sees the sh*t hitting the fan, he presses a button or pulls out the hidden magic item, suddenly the whole store from the counter to the door is bathed in Prismatic Spray, or some other such dangerous spell.

 

[Henry]

It doesn't even have to go that far; let them rob and loot and pillage a few merchants, then a few villages, then maybe even a small unprepared town. By then, word spreads about the bunch of highly skilled "marauders" who have been terrorizing the countryside. They make ADVENTURE plots about these type of people. Next thing you know, every village boards up when they come into town, every city closes its gates, and squads of mercenaries and heroes are after their butts. Just think about it like a reverse D&D campaign - the PLAYERS are the DM, and the DM is the player. So you come up with what would be a suitable challenge for the marauders, while giving the marauders a chance of winning?

 

[yennico]

I totally agree with zappo and Henry.
A merchant who sells expesive goods or magical items has secured all items that are in his shop by a curse. If sombeody except the shop owner take an item out of the shop without payment or consent of the shop owner a curse hit the thief/robber, etc. The thief loose one point of constitution each day.

Another method is that the curse colors the hands or the entire body of the thief permanently blue. Every guard in the city and other citizen know that this person has stolen something and the guards want to arrest this person.