Post/Author/DateTime	Post
PS2_DUDE 01-10-05, 01:09 AM	Hello, A D&D character of mine is a merchant and I have been just selling items to my fellow party members (of couse at a discount :) ) But my guy has become a higher lvl and has collected enough gold to possibly set up a shop, by setting up a shop I mean hiring someone to run the shop for me. The problem is that my DM and I dont know how we could do that without RP every-single-purchase. So I was wondering if anyone knew a way to speed it up, a way to roll a profession skill or any charts or a site link, anything would be helpful. Thank you very much for taking the time to read this thread as well as any help you can give me. Thx a Million :) PS2_DUDE
Mordmorgan the Mad 01-10-05, 04:50 AM	Just treat it as a Profession skill and determine the revenue that way.
penchant 01-10-05, 06:40 AM	Nah, the profession skill assumes you perform your trade in your spare time while not adventuring. A full time store would make more than that. If you wanted to keep is simple, I would just give it a multiplyer. The multiplier would start low, but increase with the size and popularity of the store as well as the number of employees. Much should still be roleplayed though, since it is also a good source of storylines.
D+1 01-10-05, 01:56 PM	The problem is that my DM and I dont know how we could do that without RP every-single-purchase. So I was wondering if anyone knew a way to speed it up, a way to roll a profession skill or any charts or a site link, anything would be helpful.Indiana Jones is an archeology professor - but how much have we ever seen of him actually teaching his classes? His adventures are his archeological "expeditions" to obtain new relics for his freinds museum. The same should be done with a PC running a shop or holding any other "job". The mundane work of running the shop is almost irrelevant since it is rarely going to be important enough to work directly into the game. Since you're talking about having someone else running the shop FOR the PC you have the perfect arrangement. Let the shop take care of itself, and use it as a means to INTRODUCE adventures, but mundane, daily transactions don't need to be played out - in fact SHOULDN'T be because they'd only distract from the real fun of the game.
spasheridan 01-10-05, 08:03 PM	Honestly I wouldn't really care to set deal with shop issues in a campaign. Keep it in the background... just say "Hey, I have a shop in that city" and move on. Serioulsy, this game is called Dungeons and Dragons, not Accountants and Balance Sheets. If a PC in my group wanted to go be a shopkeeper, that's OK with me. Go become an NPC and we'll keep adventuring. While you're off buying a shop and getting a business liscence the rest of the party will go gain a few levels and earn insane amounts of cash looting hordes. There is no way to make as much money from a normal shop job as you make looting a dragons horde. It's impossible. Your shop might have a few hundred gold profit a year.. hey, if you're a merchant that's a GREAT lifestyle. An adventurer will make a few THOUSAND gold per encounter once he's level 10 or so. WHich one do you want to be if you're a greedy PC? As a matter of fact.. this is exactly how I retired my last PC. One close call to many and I decided he wanted out. He left the party, hocked most of his magical gear in town and bought an Inn and a Beer Brewery. He's an NPC now and the rest of the party bumps into him now and then. I'm sure he's happy, but he's not an adventurer anymore. But if there's ever a fight in his bar room... well, I know who's going to win that little battle.
evangelion1010 01-11-05, 01:04 PM	Hmmm. it depends on just what items you're selling. If they're mundane, most under 250 gp, it probably won't provide a whole lot of income, relative to your adventuring. If its masterwork armor, weapons, magic items, etc.... well then, you can make a good deal of profit. It allows you to basically sell goods at 90-100% of the market value, rather than the 60% that you'd usually get. The downside is that you'll need a few months to sell most items that you put in there... Also, there's the issue of security - if you have 10k+ gp worth of items and gold, thats a very tempting target for theives or other adventurers. I'd rule that it would probably take 10-20% of your sales to ensure that the goods stay safe, depending on the size of the city, the effectivness of the local law enforcement, and how close or frequently you visit the store. If theives know you are generally within 20 miles of the store, they'll think less of robbing it than if you're generally unreachable on some distant plane/dungeon. To simplify it, i'd say it allows you to get 90% of the price when selling goods. Spending 50% of the profits (15% of the full item price) ensures that your store doesn't get robbed. Thus you get 75% of market price when selling goods, although it generally takes you at least 2 weeks to sell a given item, and up to 3 months, depending on its gp value. You may also get discounts with other merchants, lines of credit, the ability to trade items with merchants (more effective sometimes than gold). You also may be demanded to pay taxes, or give equipment to the armies during times of war, though this sould be avoided, and taxes should be included in the safety of your store.
PS2_DUDE 01-11-05, 07:19 PM	Ok thx for the tips everyone :) Keep them coming and to answer some of you questions... I would like to sell magical items (wounderous, potions, etc.) The reasson I dont just say "I have a shop is because I want to sell magical items that are worth more then just a DC of 100xProfession skill. Yes I was planing on having an NPC run the shop not me. I probably was not clean in my question, I am asking this manly to figure out a system of profit my PC recives from his shop that is easy for my DM and I to use. Thx again
spasheridan 01-12-05, 03:35 AM	The reasson I dont just say "I have a shop is because I want to sell magical items that are worth more then just a DC of 100xProfession skill. Yes I was planing on having an NPC run the shop not me. I probably was not clean in my question, I am asking this manly to figure out a system of profit my PC recives from his shop that is easy for my DM and I to use. Thx again Basicly I read your post as saying - I want to open a shop and make money while having an NPC do all the actual work instead of my PC. What are some good and easy rules that will create this free stream of revenue for my PC? Free money? You want rules for how to make free money? If I was a generous DM I wouldn't laugh in your face. But I'm not.. so.. :evillaugh :evillaugh :evillaugh Hmmm. it depends on just what items you're selling. If they're mundane, most under 250 gp, it probably won't provide a whole lot of income, relative to your adventuring. SO.. for the 1st part of your post. 250gp is more than a years wages for most of the people in the standard D&D world. Would you rather run a store that sells to EVERYONE or to just 1% of the people in a city? Think Walmart (the under 10gp store) vs Jaguar (the over 250gp store). Which store do you think makes more money in a year? Hint... Walmart is the biggest company in the world.
PS2_DUDE 01-12-05, 10:06 PM	Ok buddy do you wake up in the mourning saying "What is the most difficult way to make money?" No you dont, no one dose i am being realistic to a character whos feats are all set to magic item creation, what the heck else would i do keep make myself items to look at? AND I will have you know that my character is religious and he take 50% of any of his earnings to help his religion. So dont be coming at me all snied like, I as for help and you insult me :mad: So thx dick.
devinmdp 01-12-05, 10:51 PM	Try my trading rules. You could adapt them to shop ownership. http://www.devinweb.com/trading.htm Devin
PS2_DUDE 01-13-05, 01:13 AM	Ok Ill try that thx dude
icuall 01-13-05, 07:03 PM	I have a suggestion aside from a profession roll. The profession roll assumes you are providing labor as opposed to an investment such as a shop. As a DM, I would role play the acquisition of the shop site. Then abstractly handle the profit or loss issue. If the store front cost 20,000 gp, the PC pays that upfront. Then the amount you invest in the store say 10,000 gp in product is used as a base used in a percentage of profit calculation. I would rule that based on a d20 would be used as a scale for a percantage in the 20% result with the 10 and 11 result as median. Each point of the d20 would be the equivilent of 2% points. A roll of 20 would be 20% gain, 15 10% gain, 6 10% loss, 1 a 20% loss. A proper interim would be either quarterly or yearly. This method takes out any accounting and you get to have your shop.
spasheridan 01-17-05, 04:55 AM	Ok buddy do you wake up in the mourning saying "What is the most difficult way to make money?" No you dont, no one dose i am being realistic to a character whos feats are all set to magic item creation, what the heck else would i do keep make myself items to look at? AND I will have you know that my character is religious and he take 50% of any of his earnings to help his religion. So dont be coming at me all snied like, I as for help and you insult me :mad: So thx dick. OK PS2_DUDE. Put the playstation controller down for a minute and think about what you want to do. You, as an adventurer, want to open a store. For RP reasons this is cute and fine. But only for RP reasons. Being a merchant is a full time job. So is being an adventurer. You can only do one of them "pro", so pick one. If you want to be a pro adventurer then you're shop is really just a RP thing and has no mechanical effect on the game. If you want to be the pro merchant, then don't go adventuring because you need to stay at the shop and squeeze a few more cp out of your workforce. THere are game balance / mechanics that help the DM dish out loot to the PCs. THe point of the sale value / purchase value / craft value rations in the game exist to keep game balance. If you want the store for RP reasons then there are no price breaks or deals on items. If you do get these price breaks then they have to be balanced by the cash you spend on the store. Otherwise you're just creating a method for free money in the game and that's a bad idea. I mean, maybe you can figure out the way to do that in FFX where the store in town 1 buys chump eggs for 10 gold but the store in town 2 sells em for 2 gold and you can run back and forth until you have enough cash to buy the uber break limit hammer of death, but that's a video game. D&D is a little differant. If you want to be a crafter, then be a crafter. Crafters sit in their little craft shop studing books on crafting and whittling little things until some uber rich adventurer stops by and says "Hey, crafter, make me the uber-cool break limit hammer. I made a t0n of phat l00t killin dragons and stuff. Much more fun then sitting in this lame little craft shop. Here's yer pile of gold, get crafting!" then the rude adventurer sits there and taps his foot waiting for you to get off your but to make him his cool stuff. That's a fun life, isn't it? If you had left your crafting shop to go kill dragons and stuff, maybe you'd be this rich and you could make 2 break limit hammers, one for you and one for your friend. But then you wouldn't have been in your crafting shop waiting for this guy to give you the loot you could have earned so you could make a nifty item for him... Anywho, if you do the math, you'll probably see that the best way a spellcaster can make money (beyond adventuring, which is the BEST way to make money) is to sell his spellcasting services. A magic item shop is such a specilty shop that you might see 2 customers a year. GOod luck conving yer DM for that free money!
Shard of Suzail 01-17-05, 12:39 PM	In the last segment of our game, we had a player character die. I needed lots of diamonds to ressurect her and we just didnt have the funds for it. So, our wizard, who is planning on being an arcane trickster soon, organised a diamond robbery. With clever use of the passwall spell, some levitation, invisibility and a few paid goons, he managed to loot a whole load of stuff from the shop, including half of the diamonds we needed. *** Now, thats a gem shop. *** If you open a magic item shop, then you`re really going to have to invest in security. After all, looting your place is going to be a good plan. Thats all well and good if you are a high level wizard, with lots of defences, but even then, you are going to have to spend an enormous amount of effort protecting your stuff. To me, that just sounds like a nightmare. Dont forget, also, that a magic item shop, if its well stocked, is such a concentration of cash that it will need a huge city to support it. Additionally, those big cities are going to have competition in and are going to levy taxes and other restrictions. Couple that with the random ups and downs of the economy, with war and so on, or local dungeons getting looted and making the prices drop and well...its all just too horrific to contemplate.