Merchant

Merchant
Last Updated:	2/4/2023
Character Skill Roleplaying Skill

Experts of commerce, merchants help people find what they are looking for and are generally someone who sells goods in some way at game. Goods can include the obvious items such as consumables or crafted items, but they can also sell food and drink, mugs, plates, clothing, anything that someone might want during play might be a good item to sell if that is the angle they want to take. But selling goods isn't all a Merchant could be. A character could be a merchant who never buys or sells with another character. Roleplaying a character with a warehouse who arranges trade between two noble houses in other nations could be a merchant, as could running trade routes for a boss of some kind.

Merchants don't just make money, they build businesses. The best merchants have repeat customers, relationships with vendors, and reputations to maintain.

Description

Merchants are a unique breed in Novtias. If no one wants to travel because it's significantly more dangerous than staying in one place, there is a great deal of money to be made traveling. Transporting goods from nation to nation and city to city is a very profitable way to earn a living.

Transporting goods is sometimes done by ships in the coastal regions but there aren’t many rivers to traverse. Most ships are light and have minimal, if any sails. Over land merchants typically use pack animals, or wagons and carts drawn by those same pack animals. While there are no horses in Illumina there are oxen, donkeys, dogs and such.

The best merchants don’t just buy and sell goods at game, they create stories of what the trade empires they build do during their downtime between events. The value a good merchant brings to a party cannot be understated.

Because no one else in the game can turn in valuables for coin, merchants are the masters of valuable items. Odds are high anything involving a valuable item that a character doesn't want will eventually find its way to a merchant. This often means that merchants can charge a premium to help liquidate those items.

Mechanically, Merchants can trade in valuables for their coin value, trade in consumables for other consumables at check-in, gain a personal vault and find rare items between games.

Merchant Roleplay Skills

Merchant 1 (Beginner)

At this level of merchant the character can liquidate up to 100 coin worth of valuable items each event. They may also use valuable items to pay for crafting or production check-in costs. Use the preproduction system to do this. The merchant does not require Estimate Value to do this, they can turn items in blind (still using the estimate value look-up to fill in pre-production, because otherwise that would be tedious for everyone).

Merchant 2 (Trained):)

Using preproduction, a merchant can trade in any number of potions, scrolls, and/ or alchemy items in exchange for any combination of potions, scrolls, and/ or alchemy items with the same total number of levels. The items the merchant receives are limited to a maximum level of the merchant's highest merchant skill rank. The merchant may trade in up to their merchant rank x 10 levels of items per event.

For example, a rank 4 merchant could trade in a maelstrom (level 4) scroll in exchange for a claw of the beast (level 4) alchemy compound. That same rank 4 merchant could also trade-in during the same event a dissipate (level 2) potion and a scroll of restore limb (level 2) in exchange for a scroll of ablative armor (level 4).

Merchant 3 (Proficient)

The character may now exchange any number of valuable items of any value at check in. There is no limit to how much coin worth of valuables the character can liquidate.

Keep in mind that because any character can turn any item into a valuable item using coin and preproduction, merchants can effectively run banks using this ability.

Additionally, a merchant at this rank may have one personal vault. These are tinkering crafted items that let you store specific items (based on which vault is being used) safe from theft. This personal vault doesn't count against the limit of one of each encampment item per group, the merchant may have one and the group may have one.

Merchant 4 (Expert)

Each event the character gets randomly selected scarce items at check-in.

Merchant 5 (Master)

Work with the Rules workgroup to design a custom ability for your character.

Sample Master Merchant Abilities

The True Vault

A merchant with the fifth rank of merchant gains an invisible magic lock box with a size no greater than 1728 cubic inches (for example 1' x 1' x 1'). This box follows the same rules as a blue bag, but must be a box (with hard sides, a top, and a bottom). You can identify it by orange markings put on it.

I Know a Guy

Once per event during preproduction you may trade one scarce item for another of equal or lesser level that is not plot marshal controlled.

Safe Keeping

Gain a blue and orange bag that is no bigger than 5 inches in any direction.

Fence

You may sell craftable items during preproduction gaining the cost to craft the item.

Categories: Skills | Role-Playing Skills | Valuable Items