Merchants and Transactions

Return to Life in Celegia

Buying and selling in the Empire

The Empire has a very active and vibrant market for magical items. (This is a large part of the reason for high denomination Orbs and Thrones, for example.)

This means that, unlike most fanatsy settings, there is a much "tighter" market for magic items: The market is much more developed because there are more items in play, and they tend to move more quickly. This means that prices are fairly stable and the market can absorb and supply items quite quickly and fluidly. Indeed, the magic item trade is where a large part of the work for the hordes of couriers in the Empire comes from.

Haggling

Base buying and selling rates are as follows:

The base purchase price is 100 percent of list. The base sales price is 75 percent of list. This base price can be modified by haggling. Haggling is done using the diplomacy skill if you want to use that merchant again, or by intimidation if you don't care. You do not have to haggle.

A sales transaction begins with opposed diplomacy (or intimidation) checks. Initial attitudes are indifferent. The player and the merchant both make checks, and the one who succeeds by more moves the attitude by one in their favor. The haggling stops when you reach the maximum attitude in either direction, or when you have haggled a number of times equal to the lowest Cha mofifier of the player or the merchant, minimum 1.

For each attitude level, you gain or lose 5 percent on the sales or purchase price.

Thus, the sales price of an item can vary from 65 percent to 85 percent, the purchase price can vary from 90 percent to 110 percent.

Most merchants have a Diplomacy skill (for this purpose only) of the average encounter level of the campaign plus 20. For unskilled players, the base sales price is 65 percent and the base purchase price is 110 percent. For very skilled PC's, the base sales price is 85 percent and the base purchase price is 90 percent. For many PC's, it varies but tends to favor the merchant. Hey, it's their living, after all. :-)

On top of that, it is very common for a merchant to have items on consignment, usually arranged through their merchants guild. Such items are not in his shop, but can be gotten quickly if a delivery fee is paid. Consignment items usually compose 80 percent of a merchants inventory. If a player buys a consignment item, they can get it in 1 month for no extra cost, or they can get it in 1 day for a delivery fee of 100 to 1000 gold (assuming it is carriable by a Swift Rider), or they can get it in an hour or two if they have or are willing to purchase teleports and the like.