Post/Author/DateTime	Post
lord_kuro 06-18-06, 01:48 PM	I dont really understand how professions work. Well I do understand the basics of it but something does bug me. One of my players want to open an alchemy shop, however he doesnt know if he needs the profession alchemist. He tells me how some alchemy items are easly sold at 50g and how a profession alchemy would never compare. So exactly what do you think I should do?
Horatio Hornblower 06-18-06, 02:01 PM	It seems to me you need to know something about what you are selling. Would you open a motorcyle shop if you had never ridden one? If I asked you a question about a bike and you didn't have a clue I'd wouldn't buy one from you. He could hire an alchemist to run the shop for him, but how does he know if the guy is ripping him off? The DMG II has some stuff on business and professions. Maybe that'll help.
revnk 06-18-06, 03:38 PM	A Profession skill simply: Like Craft, Knowledge, and Perform, Profession is actually a number of separate skills. You could have several Profession skills, each with its own ranks, each purchased as a separate skill. While a Craft skill represents ability in creating or making an item, a Profession skill represents an aptitude in a vocation requiring a broader range of less specific knowledge.... You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning about half your Profession check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the profession’s daily tasks, how to supervise helpers, and how to handle common problems. You do not need ranks in a Profession skill to call yourself something: any swindling rogue might call himself an "alchemist" one week and a "cook" the next with nary a skill rank in anything other than Bluff. You do need ranks (at least under the RAW) to pursue the career (relatively) honestly and with any hopes of making a living at it. The RAW compresses such "making a living" issues into the skill check: A single check generally represents a week of work. Having said that, there is no real reason you couldn't allow a player to call himself an "alchemist" and open a store as such, and to roleplay out making a living by using skills such as Appraise and Craft (Alchemy) to purchase raw materials, concoct alchemical products, and sell them to any purchasers. Such activities ought to take up a significant amount of the character's time and might preclude more traditional adventuring activities like going into dungeons and searching for treasure. The character might farm out much of the work, but (as another poster noted) he might find himself being cheated by employees if he fails to supervise things properly (or he might find that his best employees leave to go into business for themselves as competitors if they are doing all of the real work and reaping less than all of the profit). If your player is simply looking for free money, it should be disallowed: whether he uses the Profession skills or uses several skills as equivalents, running a business takes time and effort. The Profession skills assume a week of work, and comparable activities should not take less time than that. Game weeks might be compressed into five minutes of real time at the table, but the world does not usually wait for player characters. If a princess is kidnapped, the player may have to choose between a heroic rescue before the kidnappers murder her and a week of checking inventory, sweeping floors, paying wages, etc. (While the infinite scope of an RPG allows players to roleplay shopkeepers, it's not exactly the high adventure usually contemplated by a fantasy game.) I hope this answers your question. If I misunderstood something and you were asking about something else, I apologize for taking your time. Good gaming!
kinjojones 06-18-06, 03:54 PM	I think that kind of shop would fall outside the realm of a profession. If he wanted to sell alchemical items in that way he'd need to have the craft: alchemy skill and sell them to somekind of wholesaler who in turn distributes them to the Goods and Services section of the Equipment Chapter of Everyone's Players Handbook. Kidding aside. If what he wants to do is open an alchemy shop or I think it would be more likely an apothecary shop then it would be something of a roleplay issue. Remember that an item created takes 1/3 of it's GP value in raw materials so for the 50 GP vial of antitoxin you're already losing about 17 gp. The Craft DC is 25 and if you barely meet the check then you can have the vial made in a week. So if you made nothing but Vials of toxins you could make about 28 GP a week assuming that there are customers availible to sell it to. Really you're better off just adventuring