How would you feel about merchants as a playable class in a fantasy rpg, such as D&D and its derivatives, and how do you think such a class should ideally function?
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How would you feel about merchants as a playable class in a fantasy rpg, such as D&D and its derivatives, and how do you think such a class should...
D&D and D&D adjacent games don't know what to do with a character whose primary purpose in the game is either killing something or keeping someone else from being killed (usually by killing things before they can kill anyone else)
That never stopped thieves and bards from being a thing
>thieves and bards
thieves have had to become similar to fighters and bards at 5e even have 9th level spell access, they are mages of sorts and were a peculiar fighter/mage/thief combo in the past.
https://5e.d20srd.org/srd/classes/bard.htm
>merchants as a playable class
make a cleric of the trader deity like Zilchus or Waukeen and do not bother with a trader class. It would be worse than the thief and the bard combined.
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Waukeen
https://greyhawkonline.com/greyhawkwiki/Zilchus
The problem with this is that it creates a bubble of situations in which only one character is relevant, and prevents them from being relevant in most of the other typical actions the party takes.
Whether this is a good thing or bad thing depends heavily on your group and GMing style. Some groups I've played with really like having super specialized characters that get a ton of things only they can do. Others will get bored out of their minds waiting for the merchant to finish their haggling bullshit. As a GM, you have to work a lot harder to keep players engaged during these moments. It's like when you have some magical stuff that only the party wizard can feasibly solve so everyone else has to sort on their ass twiddling their thumbs until he finishes.
The main reason most of these games are so focused on combat and dungeon exploration is that it's one of the few situations where everyone in the the group can participate at once.
if there's mechanics there to support it than sure
You want Papers and Paychecks. Hope you like matrices!
>Papers and Paychecks
cleaner
I've seen it a few times. In good systems (Rogue Trader, Traveller) it's a good idea. In bad systems (Forbidden Lands) it's absolute dogshit awful. The risks aren't usually worth the rewards imo.
What, you mean like the 1e Merchant class in Dragon Magazine 136 - 1d6hp/level, appraisal skil as well as cantrips and some minor spell use? Yes, it works well as an npc fence, someone to value and sell the loot to, but not much use as a player character exploring and looting a dangeous dungeon or tomb though. How does 5e do it, probably gives them superpowers or something.
There's also the Sages and Specialists splat for 2E that fleshes out a lot of NPC classes.
I would absolutely adore being a merchant, I've never found combat and combat-oriented games particularly fun, instead I always gravitate toward economic and survival aspects of the world(which systems like 5e absolutely hate, one guy with a 3rd level spell mogs your hunter with a lifetime of wilderness experience)
theres a version of this in scout magazine 1 for ose, mostly revolves around being very good at hiring, managing, and interacting with retainers, along with appraising items and making passive income in domain play. it's pretty neat, they put it on reddit for free so you can check it out.
try osr
this and all the similar in this thread are 0 imagination grognard posts, disregard them
Tressa is based in Octopath.
The pf2e alchemist would unironically be better off reworked into Merchant since the entire class is about using store-bought consumables everyone has access to, you just pull yours out of your ass every day.
Ryuutama explicitly has a Merchant class.
WHFRP Merchant and related careers are often very useful.
for a traveling peddler you could go full Spice and Wolf
Here's a sheet from my game, it actually is my most chosen class out of them for some odd reason.
>merchants
Thieves and rogues cannot function in the game fully, and after all these years they have to become more and more like other classes, like adding "sneak" attack which is a flank attack damage bonus which only the warriors would get, and don't since rogues/thieves are largely useless in almost everything despite having more skills and abilities than anyone else.
A merchant which is all about social connections and financial dealings and managerial situations has no place in the game as a PC, only as an NPC.
If an effort is made then you would come upon the same problem as with the thief/rogue where you would have to add elements from other classes to the merchant one.
Can he fight in melee? Badly.
Can he fight from afar? Badly.
Can he cast spells? No.
Can he deal with traps? No.
Does he have abilities useful and similar or spells in a way? Like becoming invisible or silent etc? No.
Anything bard-like? No, except some sort of gather information capacity if he has agents installed and connections.
He would be lesser than a thief/rogue and only better at making money and at social situations.
See 2e Trader Class for Athas (Dark Sun), page 65, but and its a big but "A new character class is introduced here-the Dune Trader class" this assumes a trader-based campaign, and the players are shown how to play trader characters and start their own merchant houses.
Human, elf or half-elf. Int 10 Wis 15 Cha 12. Can multi-class with Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief or Bard for half-elves, and Psionicist. They have agents, can fast talk, are good with poisons, linguist, spying and social skills, intimidation.
A naval merchant prince appeared in GAZ9: "The Minrothad Guilds" (1988), which also had supply-and-demand-based trade rules. A land-based merchant appeared the next year in GAZ11: "The Republic of Darokin" (1989), complete with experience points earned for trading.
>Anything bard-like? No, except some sort of gather information capacity if he has agents installed and connections.
A merchant should get bonuses to persuasion and bluffing rolls.
>bonuses to persuasion and bluffing rolls.
yes, all that social stuff but it will not help when his face is being eaten off by a goblyn
>A merchant should get bonuses to persuasion and bluffing rolls.
even if you give the class all the spy skills/abilities/features and diplomacy skills/abilities/features and social skills/abilities/features from all the prestige classes and classes in 3.5e the class would still be useless in combat, in a dungeon, in the wild and in a real conflict in general.
And of course he would not be a merchant, but James Bond posing as one.
>muh class
moronic.
>a career
Patrician and WFRP2-pilled.
Any good TTRPG lets you play as a merchant and it causes no issue, because it's not Dee&Dogshit.
>merchants as a playable class
they have no place, you are in effect talking and asking about whether you realize it or not, is removing or reducing the abilities of a preexisting class to replace them with some merchant stuff and keep the previous class partly as to make the new "trader" class playable. And call this a trader.
He will have no sneak attack, no spells, no trap skills, no weapon skills...
Merchants are managers, they are not something else. They are Npcs that hire Pcs to go on adventures, while they stay and do their job. They hire PCs to protect them in their caravans and operations.
Take the above advice, make a cleric of a merchant deity and you unique trader skills and abilities and class features are your spells. This works and you are even more than a merchant but a priest of the deity of the traders and all that stuff.
>how do you think such a class should ideally function?
an NPC "class" that hires PC to do things. That is its function unless you are playing a houses game in which all the PCs are traders like it was an option in Dark Sun 2e.
You mean like in WFRP or Honor+Intrigue?
>merchants as a playable class
What such a class would look like, an actual one
Alignment Any except CN (that is an insane person) and usually Lawful as it takes discipline and organizations skills and stability, any non-lawful would give a penalty to all his rolls
Hit Die d4 or 1 hit point per level or no progression, a 20th level "merchant" should have 1 to 8 hit points at most
Weapon and Armor Proficiency; none
Non-physical social Feats and all others banned
Non-physical social class skills and all other as non-class or banned
No arcane, divine, or psionic powers and spells
Wizard base attack bonus or even worse or no progression, as he has others do the fighting for him, a 20th level "merchant" should have +0 or better a penalty
Wizard weapon proficiency or none (he has less reasons and time and motive to learn to fight, he hires warriors)
Saving throws Will may progress a bit but Fortitude and Reflex not at all
Mercantile Knowledge like the Bardic capacity or similar
and some class features as mentioned in the thread, social and spy talkie stuff.
a 20th level trader LN should have 1-8 hit points, +0 attack skill, no weapon skills, some social merchant enabling feats, many social skills and abilities and pretty much that is it. And a ton of money if he did not frick it up despite his level.
He could hire a small army if he has his money.
>Alignment Any except CN (that is an insane person) and usually Lawful as it takes discipline and organizations skills and stability, any non-lawful would give a penalty to all his rolls
have a nice day moron
They absolutely should be rolled into an artificer class in a DND-like system, as bartering and trading doesn't provide a strong system of interaction with dungeon-crawling and fighting.
An item and consumable class with some features revolving around trading could be interesting and engaging.
>rolled into an artificer class
Then they would not be merchants or traders or such a class. Just artificers that happen to trade and the such. They can do that already by getting some diplomacy, bluff and similar skills.
A gnome artificer or tinkerer would add some more weird irrelevant "mercantile" stuff in the class. Just a name? Another name variant, like a pathfinder archetype or a 2e class kit or a prestige class for artificers that would be the "Mercantile Arfificer"?
Α weaker artificer, that trades in some useful abilities for the abilities to engage in financial trade...
The artificer class would end up like the 5e bard with 9th level spells and a fighter/thief/mage fully class.
A mix of things that are in the end a mess.
see 2e Tsr 09516 Faiths & Avatars, page 179
Specialty Priests (Goldeyes) of Waukeen
convert to your system for a full merchant deity clerical core class
i just read the class, i recommend it, check it out.
ACKS has the Venturer class, which is a daring merchant who pursues high risk, high reward trades and is willing to adventure to raise funds and gain treasures to sell. The class has a ton of useful abilities, most of which are social or trade related and make the Venturer a great party face and fence.
However, I don't particularly like merchants as PCs. Ultimately they need to engage in trade and I find that kind of tedious and boring, and would much rather focus on dungeons.
It's dumb, combat is a big part of the game so everyone should be able to do something in it, plus no one likes to sit there and watch the greedgay player waste their time with haggling.
I would feel they would be useless as a class, given how specific a merchant's job is.
A subclass or background type option for a merchant would probably work better.
For example, a thief class could have a con artist subclass based around scamming, rather than pickpocketing or typical bandit behavior. A fighter could be a traveling trader who pawns off his dungeon loot, and knows their shit to get better deals on certain items.
Background wise, a merchant could be pretty fun. Get some bonuses that make your character better at bartering, scamming, selling loot for you and your party, etc.
Any player character can start doing a trader enterprise but won't gain XP.
The money earned can be spent on hirelings and better equipped expeditions. The playstyle doesn't need a class.
It shouldn't. If you absolutely must have "merchant" as a character building option, make it a background or something similar. D&D and derivates are built around combat and dungeoneering, and merchants have no place in either.
>playable class
the only playable classes are a standard cleric that worships a merchant deity or a specialty cleric that does the same.
So, not a merchant class.
Many games could support this, but for a D&D adjacent game you basically are required to turn it into a fighter skin, like rogue or it'll cause to many issues.
nothing preventing a game from having them, just needs to not be a game primarily about killing monsters. Ryuutama has
>Minstrel (bard)
>Merchant
>Hunter (not a magical ranger)
>Farmer
>Artisan
>Noble
I will caveat with saying that you've kind of got dual classes in ryuutama, a "profession" type class which determines general skills and then picking between attack(fighter)/technical(rogue)/magic type for determining other things.
(Also the % price change table is broken since -80% and +80% are not equivalent at all, I houserule it to be the same amount of profit margin for both buying and selling)
What do you mean by a merchant? Because if it's a traveling buyer/reseller, then they would have many applicable adventure skills. They would need to have rudimentary combat skills (because of wild animals and opportunistic robbers), excellent social skills (their entire job) and good exploration skills (from the survival requirements of overland travel, general observation, forage, etc.) Also, being one of the rare and special class of people that have been more than mile away from where they were born, it's likely they have random bits of knowledge from all sorts of disciplines and various cultures.
A merchant class would be reasonably simulated from management of resource pools with special conditions for being refilled. The supply pool, where they reveal they've been carrying around an item of level-specific value and rarity, maybe, and which is replenished only through spending money at a trade location; a lore pool, which they roll against to know relevant information, and which becomes harder to use every time until they level up again; a guile pool which provides an unstable bonus to social checks with harsher backlash for failure. Non-magical, non-musical bard+rangers without the combat wank of being LOTR knock-offs.
A shopkeep would make a bad adventurer though. That can be its own character type or plot hook, but it wouldn't likely be their "class" in a class-based TTRPG. It would be their fluff, background, secondary skill suite, something like that.
why would you need merchant to be a playable class
just buy and sell goods you fricking moron
why would you need fighter to be a playable class
just swing and block swords you fricking moron
Just play medieval traveller
Wouldn't work in DND because that game is entirely based around combat, but it would work in a good game. I imagine it would function like an Exec in Cyberpunk, where they're a diplomancer with some quality-of-life features and a bunch of hired mercs to accompany them everywhere and do the grunt work.
In games like D&D which are focused on being epic fantasy Heroes who save the world they'd be pretty bad and not that useful in a lot of scenarios. In games that go for a more grounded feel though they absolutely should be. They probably also already are.
Any standard class would work as a merchant, but I can see it working better for Bards, Rogues and maybe Sorcerers.
DND is a game about being heroes who dungeon dive. A merchant in the party wouldn't do enough to be engaging for a player with any edition of dnds rules. Either they break the games economy too early and everyone gets +2 legendary items or they just provide everyone with one random extra potion and during combat just listen to what the other players do on their phone while they "RP" hiding in a barrel.
Non combat characters can be fun in dnd, especially at low levels, but ultimately there are no skills that a merchant class would do that any charisma characters couldn't also do.
Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader actually both nail the trader/ commerce character better then any other rpg I've played.
i like it in ACKS