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The Merchant
  Merchantry
Level Special Expertise Die Knacks Skills
1 Venture 1d4 1 4
2 Mercantilism 1d6 1 6
3   1d6 2 7
4 Mercantilism 1d6 2 8
5   1d6 2 10
6 Mercantilism 1d8 2 11
7   1d8 3 12
8 Mercantilism 1d8 3 14
9   1d8 3 15
10 Merchant Talent 1d10 3 16
11   1d10 4 18
12 Merchant Talent 1d10 4 19
13   1d10 4 20
14 Merchant Talent 1d12 4 22
15   1d12 5 23
16 Merchant Talent 1d12 5 24
17   1d12 5 26
18 Merchant Talent 2d10 5 27
19   2d10 6 28
20 Merchant Talent 2d10 6 30

 

Merchant

Recette, iconic merchant
"Capitalism, ho!"

Yep... words.

So basically this class lives in a weird place. They are, essentially, a pet class - or at least that's how I'm envisioning it. The idea is that the merchant runs a business - be it an actual brick-and-mortar shop, or their "business" of being a traveling merchant wandering around selling shit - and that business has a mechanical chassis to it, which makes it effectively a character of its own.

I don't have a good handle on how this will all go down, though, so... bear with me.

Also kind of underlying this whole thing is going to be the notion of a "business turn." Basically we're going to take combat time and ramp up the concept so that we have a number of ways to slice time. If we run a game where a bunch of people are merchants and artisans, it makes sense to me that we would have a timekeeping framework that is sensible for that idea.

Game Rule Information

Merchants have the following game statistics.

Force Alignment: None.

Force Resistances: None.

Abilities: I honestly have no idea right now.

Defenses: Will +2, Determination +4.

Hit Points at 1st Level: 5 + Con score.

Hit Points at Each Additional Level: 5 + Con modifier.

Healing Surges: 6 + Con modifier.

Starting Age: Simple.

Class Features

All of the following are class features of the merchant.

Proficiencies

Weapons: Any three.

Armor: Clothing.

Implements: Kits.

Merchantry

Merchants engage in merchantry, with individual tasks or abilities referred to as skills which are grouped into knacks, specializations that exist under the umbrella of merchantry as a whole.

 

Merchantry Knacks
Knack Secondary Ability Description
???  ??? ???
???  ??? ???
???  ??? ???
???  ??? ???
???  ??? ???
???  ??? ???

 

The merchant can make use of any of his skills at any time; when he does, he usually makes a merchantry check, which is d20 + his trick's knack's secondary ability modifier (plus his level modifier, as appropriate). If the merchant has a kit implement, he can add his attunement bonus to the check, if any. Some skills are constantly active, provided you meet their conditions, while others have additional requirements you must meet in order to use them.

If the merchant is not stressed, he can take 10 on his merchantry checks, acting as though he had rolled a 10 on the d20 and adding his normal bonuses.

Venture

Regardless of their focus or wares they carry, all merchants engage in the venture, the means by which money is made from the art of the deal.

You automatically gain one venture. You can start up new ventures as your money and time allow.

These rules will be written up, honest.

Ventures

Oh god, lots of random notes are going to go here as we hash out this concept. This will not be pretty.

Credit: Death and Dying in Business

So, here's the thing. Unlike combat, you can't die by failing at running a business. But there still need to be ramifications, because (1) that makes it more interesting, and (2) it should roughly mirror how combat works, in a vague and general sense.

I'm going to start using a lot of financial and economic terms, and most of them probably incorrectly. However, for right now, I don't care, I just need a separate set of terms that are sensible.

Ventures do not have hit points; instead, they have credit, a vague measure of their current solvency and cash flow. When you do your initial capitalization, which is how you create a venture, you invest some amount of money into the venture. That shit turns into credit using some kind of formula that will be sensible.

We'll call it "CP," and that stands for credit points. This is a combination of money and other weird financial instruments like actual credit and shit, and it is intentionally abstract. As a merchant, you will probably want to take money out of the venture for yourself at times, but rather than track money into the crazy places (like forcing you to track hundreds of thousands of gp), we're going to reduce the numbers and come up with formulae that make this sensible. Hopefully that also handle breakpoints reasonably, so there isn't a time at which it is obvious to pull money out for mechanical reasons.

Okay.

If your CP hits 0, your venture is insolvent. This is a bad place to be. Basically at the beginning of each uh... "business turn" (BT) you have to make some kind of check to see if your situation is better somehow. This is like the death saves in combat. If you fail three of these, your venture becomes bankrupt: it goes away, and you lose everything associated with it.

Ventures don't have a max CP, they really can just go off into infinity.

During your BT, you can take a cash injection action, which basically turns your merchant character's cash into credit at some horrible, not awesome ratio. This sort of thing is a quick fix to a bad situation, not something you want to do on a regular basis. I think actual business works that way, too, so that might be a cool thing.

Assets: Where Business is Done

In addition to your credit, a venture has assets. Assets aren't shit you sell, they're the tools of the trade. If you own a shop, the physical building itself is an asset, as are the counters and shelves and shit inside. I don't know how deep into detail we want to get with this.

You can buy assets with real money, or you can buy it with venture credit. Using actual money is more expensive; using credit is less expensive. Why? The relationship between people who supply shit to businesses and the business owners is way different from the one between vendor and random asshole on the street trying to buy stuff. This is an actual thing. If you're buying stuff as a business, you can get it for cheaper, but then it is also intrinsically part of that venture. As with credit, you can use your merchant character money to buy the assets of a venture and turn them into "your" stuff (as opposed to the venture's stuff, which is still yours, but a step removed), but its expensive and annoying to do. Why? Because it has to be.

If you're a traveling merchant guy and all you have is a bag of stuff, you don't have assets. The venture itself is basically a vague notion that you're a business-person, and maybe have some renown as such ("hey look, Mark the traveling merchant is here again"). But once you do shit like have a donkey and a wagon and other nonsense, your venture has assets.

Assets also turn into an operational cost. This is basic upkeep and making sure things don't look like shit. You buy feed for the donkey, nails to fix the broken wagon wheel, replace the creaky hinge on the front door of the shop... entropy is a thing, and shit breaks down over time. We gloss over the minutiae and just say "fuck it, this thing costs X upfront and has a Y upkeep, deal with it." This does not mean that more catastrophic shit can't happen, this merely prevents things from breaking down over time. You don't have to pay the operational cost, but that will probably result in negatives to rolls or some shit like that.

How are we going to handle these? They're... basically equipment. I don't know.

Stock: The Meat of the Thing

So we have credit which represents money flow and supply, we have assets which are shit that supposedly make your life easier or whatever somehow, and now we have stock, the stuff you actually sell.

...I need to ponder more.