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 skill, your character can liquidate valuable items worth up to 100 coin at each event.

Additionally, you can use valuable items to pay for crafting or production check-in costs. This process is handled through the preproduction system. As a merchant, you won't need to use the Estimate Value skill; you can turn in items "blind." However, during preproduction you should still use the Estimate Value lookup to streamline the process, preventing tedium for both you and the staff.

Merchant 2 (Trained):)

Using preproduction, a merchant can exchange potions, scrolls, and/or alchemy items. You can trade in any number of these items for any combination of new ones, as long as the total number of levels remains the same.

The items you receive are limited by your merchant's highest skill rank; you cannot receive items above that level. Each event, you can trade items up to a maximum of 10 levels multiplied by your merchant rank.

Examples:

• A Rank 4 merchant could trade a Anti-Magic Aura scroll (level 4) for a Claw of the Beast alchemy compound (level 4).
• That same Rank 4 merchant could also trade a Dissipate potion (level 2) and a Scroll of Restore Limb (level 2) for a Scroll of Ablative Armor (level 4) within the same event.

Merchant 3 (Proficient)

Your character can now exchange any number of valuable items at check-in. There's no longer a limit to how much coin worth of valuables you can liquidate. Since any character can convert items into valuables using coin and preproduction, merchants can effectively operate as banks with this ability.

At each event, the merchant will also receive a random selection of scarce items at check-in.

Additionally, a merchant at this rank may have one personal vault. These are tinkering crafted items designed to securely store specific items, depending on the vault type. This personal vault doesn't count against the usual limit of one of each encampment item per group.

Merchant 4 (Expert)

The merchant gains an additional personal vault. This can be the same as the vault chosen at level 3, if so desired. This personal vault doesn't count against the group encampment limit.

Merchant 5 (Master)

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

Sample Master Merchant Abilities

The True Vault

The merchant gains an invisible magic lock box. This box has a maximum volume of 1728 cubic inches (for example, 1' x 1' x 1'). It follows the same rules as a blue bag, but it must be a physical box with hard sides, a top, and a bottom. You can identify your personal box by its orange markings.

I Know a Guy

Once per event during preproduction, the merchant 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

The merchant may sell craftable items during preproduction, gaining the cost to craft the item.

Categories: Skills | Role-Playing Skills | Valuable Items