The Merchant Class

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This is presented as a non-adventuring class; what that means is the character has no fighting ability more than a normal man and is generally treated as an npc class, though the standard multiclassing rules apply and a PC could choose to spend time advancing in this class. My sources of inspiration come from gaz 11, Dragon #62 Magic for Merchants on pg 56-60, Dragon 136 Taking Care of Business on pg 22-26 and the trader subclass from Darksun. This is a completely mundane non-spellcasting class, any spells I liked have been converted into class abilities. The class follows my format of base class with advanced specializations (Banker, Dealer, Smuggler, Merchant Prince) once name level is reached in the vein of the Companion Set.

The Merchant

Becoming a Merchant - the character must convince a of name level to take the character as an apprentice. This may involve becoming a member of a Merchant Guild; most guilds require a character to be sponsored by a current guild member and the payment of guild dues of 1,000 sp per year but may charge as high as 2,000 sp per year.  A merchant character must still undergo training as normal between levels(1-6 months).

Fighting Ability - as normal man; 1d6 HD(no more than the normal man); no weapon training

Prime Requisite - Charisma (5% XP bonus if 13-15, 10% if 16+; 10% penalty if 8-6, 20% if 5-3)

Secondary Requisite - Wisdom (3% XP bonus if 13-15, 5% if 16+; 5% penalty if 8-6, 10% if 5-3)

Tertiary Requisite - Intelligence (1% XP bonus if 13-15, 3% if 16+; 3% penalty if 8-6, 5% if 5-3)

XP - 1 point of experience is gained for every Silver Piece earned as profit (based on the silver standard, if using the gold standard, 1xp=1gp).

Languages - Trade Common

Level    XP            Appraisal        Haggle

1        0                   1d100 x2           -                

2        5000             1d100                -       

3        10,000          1d100 -5            -           

4        20,000          1d100 -10        +1

5        40,000          1d100 -15        +1

6        80,000          1d100 -20        +1

7        150,000        1d100 -25        +1

8        300,000        1d100 -30        +2

9        750,000        1d100 -35        +2

10      1,500,000     1d100 -40        +2

11      3,000,000     1d100 -45        +2

12      6,000,000     1d100 -50        +3

Appraisal - This ability can be used to quickly estimate the value of a pile of coins, a single item, or the contents of a container. When appraising an item % dice are rolled, and the final value (including any bonuses or penalties) gives a range of what the merchant believes the value of the item to be. If the merchant specializes in the class of item to be appraised they gain a -20 bonus. The DM may also apply bonuses or penalties as the situation requires. If the appraisal total is less than 50% then the presence of any enchantments will be discernible, but not their effects.

        For example, Billarsh the 6th level merchant is trying to determine the value of an ornate vase an adventurer is trying to sell him. he rolls % and gets a 81, add his level bonus(-20) and a small penalty applied by the dm for the dirty condition of the vase(+5) and he gets a total of 67%. The vase DM has determined the value of the vase at 35 sp, so Billarsh knows the vase is worth between  23 and 59 sp. Billarsh wants to buy the vase at a low value and sell it at a high value, so he offers the adventures 15 sp and after haggling they agree on 20; he later is able to sell it to a gullible noble for 50 sp, so he earns 30 sp in profit form that transaction and thus 30 xp.

Alarm - A merchant has the ability to set an alarm over a specified area (a door, a camp, a wagon) that will alert him of the presence of any creature by creating a loud noise. This requires the use of assorted objects necessary for the rigging of the alarm ( a bell, string, buckets, etc). Upon reaching 4th level a merchant can rig the alarm to be a repeating and not disabled after the first activation(a bell over a shop door).

Haggle - anyone can attempt to haggle, but merchants are trained in this art. Haggling is done using the standard reaction chart rolling a 2d6. There are 3 phases, the approach, the offer, and the counteroffer. The approach determines the attitude of each character toward each other and the result of any subsequent dealings, this may be determined by the DM or rolled for, and also may be modified by the initial price set for an item(if above or below appraisal value). Once an initial price is set, the PC makes an offer and may add any bonuses due to level or CHA to a 2d6 roll, the other party either accepts or refuses the offer. If they continue negotiating the PC must makes another counteroffer and roll again. this is the last roll which determines refusal, acceptance, or if the merchant settles for a price in the middle.

Approach                    Offer                                            Counter

2          Hostile, refuse to negotiate

3-5      Unfriendly        2-8    Refuse to negotiate

                                     9-12  Continue Negotiations    2-5    Refuse to negotiate

                                                                                      6-8    Settle

                                                                                      9-12  Accept offer

6-8      Indifferent        2-5    Refuse to negotiate

                                    6-8    Continue Negotiations    2-5    Refuse to negotiate

                                                                                      6-8    Settle

                                                                                      9-12  Accept offer

                                    9-12  Accept offer

9-11    Receptive        2-5    Continue Negotiations     2-5    Refuse to negotiate

                                                                                      6-8    Settle

                                                                                      9-12  Accept offer

                                   6-12  Accept offer

12       Friendly, accept offer

Movement Rates for Old School Essentials

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So due to the absurd movement rates provided in classic D&D I'm finally putting forth my own take at revising it for realistic game use. I have done this before for D&D back in high school but I don't particularly like the rates I came up with then, and I also came up with standard rates for my own rpg system based on statistics of real world athletes, but this is for D&D which is an abstract system and I want something that plugs into the D&D rules already there.

I think everyone agrees that moving 120 feet every ten minutes is ridiculously slow if we assume the PCs are actually moving, that is 0.14 miles per hour. Sheesh! Someone didn't do some basic math. So I think we need a basic walking speed that is different. The base encounter speed of 40 feet per round is 2.7 miles an hour which is reasonable for the average person, so lets use that. the other huge problem is the given speed for running during a pursuit in the wilderness (40x3x3(because yards instead of feet) which is 360 ft per round, which can be maintained for 5 minutes! That is 24.5 miles per hours, which is humanly impossible. Usain Bolt reaches an average of like 21 or 22 miles per hour in the 100 meter dash(its been a while since I look up the stats), and he can definitely not do that for 5 minutes. So the running speed needs to be paired down. After talking to my brother, who ran cross country and track in high school and college, and doing some math I came up with different rates of speed for the unencumbered man.

Searching: 120 feet per turn. Causes 1 Fatigue point after 1 hour.

This is the speed at which PCs explore dungeons at a cautious rate, looking for traps, secret doors, listening at doors, mapping, etc. When traveling at this rate a roll to find secret doors and traps is automatically made, and the players do not have to specify that they are searching. This could be interpreted as moving in a straight line down a hall or searching 12 10'x10' squares.

Walking: 40 feet per round (800 yards per turn, 2.7 miles per hour). Causes 1 Fatigue point after 1 hour.

This is your standard walking rate, both indoors and outdoors. This is the rate used for overland movement, and the players can decide when they want to rest.

Hustling: 80 feet per round (1600 yards or 0.91 miles per turn). Causes 1 Fatigue point after 1 turn.

This is the standard combat encounter speed.

Running: 120 feet per round (2400 yards or 1.36 miles per turn). Causes 1 Fatigue point after 20 rounds (3 after 1 turn)

This is your running speed during a pursuit. It can only be sustained for a few minutes. 

Sprinting: 200 feet per round. Causes 1 Fatigue point after 1 round.

This the fastest a PC can go, they are bolting for their life their life here. This is also the speed used during a charge in combat.

The above speeds are for the unencumbered human and elf. Gnomes haves speeds of 30/60/90/150. Each Encumbering Item decreases speed by 10/20/30/50.

Weapon vs Armor Adjustments

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Dan Collins at Delta's D&D Hotspot recently did a statistical deep dive into the weapon vs armor table in the 1e AD&D PHB. Essentially the numbers come from the Chainmail man to man melee table, but Gygax did his math wrong. This is why the numbers in the PHB don't even remotely reflect historical reality. The numbers in Chainmail aren't exactly historically precise either, but at least they feel like they could be reasonable.

In my last effort at putting together houserules for OSE I considered using a weapon vs armor table, but since the one in AD&D is so ridiculous I tried to make my own. To do this I thought about restricting AC just to specific armors as originally intended and have dex add to hp instead of con. However, in the end I decided against it because if AC equaled actual armor types then I would have to redo the AC for every single monster, which I wasn't about to do. So AC is an abstract concept representing how difficult it is, or how much effort is required, to actually cause a significant injury. I tried assigning specific +or- values to hit for each weapon vs armor types, e.g. giving +2 to hit chain for maces to represent the fact that the chain doesn't protect against bludgeoning weapons, but the padding underneath would. I found it too fiddly though, and I ended up giving certain weapons Target Specialization(granting advantage or disadvantage) vs certain armor types, such as chain, or padded, or plate, and this bonus would apply to monsters with a similar type of 'natural armor' like dragon scales, etc. So this is what I came up with:

So spurred on by Dan's analysis and by this post with a further conversion of the chainmail numbers, I decided to do my own take. 

First, since chainmail used a 2d6 as a basis we can assume that a 7 to kill is average. So going from there I extrapolated the probabilities of getting below or above seven and converted that to a bonus or penalty, numbers above 7 result in some -%, and numbers below seven result in some positive %:

then I took the numbers needed to roll a hit in Chainmail, resulting in a kill, and converted the 2d6 number to a % bonus or penalty. For the missile weapons I took an average value of all three ranges:

From this it's simply a matter of dividing by five to convert to a d20 to hit roll as +or-1 is the same as +or-5%. I ignored the values for shields as I have my own rules for shields and their use is very situational, as opposed to armor which is always there. So this is what the Chainmail values to kill would be converted as adjustments to hit:

Some of the numbers make sense to me, like the huge penalties to bows vs plate; its not really any of the numbers that bother me, but comparing them to each other. What's the difference bewteen a horse bow and a composite bow? I'm assuming a horse bow implies a bow used by the different steppe cultures, but all those bows were composite, so why have two listings? And why is the 2-handed sword better at killing someone in armor than the lance? That is so ridiculous. and why are the polearm and halbard so drastically different? did Gary not know that a halbard is a polearm? And the Spear, I mean come on. And the drastic differences between a mace, morningstar, and flail; why would weapons that are so similar have such huge differences in effectiveness? 

So, I think we can conclude that Gary set a few of these numbers based on what he knew about history and pulled the rest out of his ass. I think I'm going to stick with advantage/disadvantage as it better represents the vicissitudes of combat, rather than try to work this table so it represents reality.

Fae Spell Lists

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So after making new set of houserules for OSE I decided I wanted to make the elf spell list different from the magic user and more nature oriented. I took some druid spells and some of the spells in gaz 5. I also decided to update the gnome(from the advanced fantasy genre rules, this would be the forest gnome in my campaign) spell list on similar principles.

Elf Spells

Level 1

1. Detect Magic
2. Detect Danger
3. Enchant Missile(as magic missile but on missiles already in hand)
4. Faerie Lights
5. Fellowship
6. Light
7. Longstride
8. Precipitation
9. Shield
10. Sleep
11. Ventriloquism
12. Faerie Fire
13. Locate plant or animal
14. Predict Weather
15. Watcher

Level 2

1. Continual Light
2. Detect Invisible
3. Entangle
4. ESP
5. Heat Metal
6. Invisibility
7. Levitate
8. Locate Object
9. Mirror Image
10. Obscure
11. Phantasmal Force
12. Produce Fire
13. Silence(single target)
14. Warp Wood
15. Web

Level 3

1. Call Lightning
2. Clairvoyance
3. Cure Disease
4. Cure Light Wounds
5. Dispel Magic
6. Fireball
7. Fly
8. Haste
9. Hold(Person or Animal)
10. Infravision
11. Invisibility 10' radius
12. Protection from normal missiles
13. Protection from Poison
14. Speak with Animals
15. Water Breathing

Level 4

1. Charm Monster
2. Confusion
3. Control Temp 10' radius
4. Enchant Weapon
5. Fear
6. Growth of Nature
7. Hallucinatory Terrain
8. Ice Storm/Wall
9. Plant Door
10. Protection from Lightning
11. Remove Curse
12. Speak with Plants
13. Summon Animals
14. Transform(may massmorph, polymorph self, or polymorph others)
15. Wall of Fire

Level 5

1. Anti-Plant Shell
2. Cloudkill
3. Commune with Nature
4. Conjure Elemental
5. Control Winds
6. Dissolve(Transmute Rock to Mud)
7. Feeblemind
8. Hold Monster
9. Insect Plague
10. Neutralize Poison
11. Pass Plant
12. Telekinesis
13. Teleport
14. Wall of Stone
15. Wall of Thorns

Forest Gnome Spells

Level 1

1. Animal Friendship
2. Auditory Illusion
3. Chromatic Orb
4. Color Spray
5. Detect Danger
6. Detect Illusion
7. Entangle
8. Faerie Fire
9. Faerie Lights
10. Glamour
11. Hypnotism
12. Light
13. Phantasmal Force
14. Spook
15. Wall of Fog

Level 2

1. Barkskin
2. Blindness/Deafness
3. Blur
4. Detect Magic
5. False Aura
6. Fascinate
7. Hypnotic Pattern
8. Improved Phantasmal Force
9. Invisibility
10. Magic Mouth
11. Mirror Image
12. Produce Fire
13. Quasimorph
14. Warp Wood
15. Whispering Wind

Level 3

1. Blacklight
2. Dispel Illusion
3. Fear
4. Growth of Nature
5. Hallucinatory Terrain
6. Hold Animal
7. Invisibility 10' radius
8. Nondetection
9. Paralysation
10. Phantom Steed
11. Rope Trick
12. Spectral Force
13. Suggestion
14. Treeshape
15. Wraithfrom

Level 4

1. Charm(Monster, person , or animal)
2. Confusion
3. Dispel Magic
4. Emotion
5. Illusory Stamina
6. Improved Invisibility
7. Massmorph
8. Minor Creation
9. Phantasmal Killer
10. Polymorph(other or self)
11. Rainbow Pattern
12. Shadow Monsters
13. Solid Fog
14. Summon Animals
15. Veil of Abandonment

Tinkering with Vancian Magic-Users

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I was thinking about how I could modify the rules for vancian spellcasting I outlined here more to my liking.

Here's an idea, the number of spell points, let's call it mental facility, still uses the D&D spells/level chart, but is limited by the magic-user's intelligence. So, a magic-user with 10 INT would be limited to the 1st level spell column, an 11 INT would add the 1st and 2nd level spell columns together, a 12 INT would combine the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd columns together, and so on. so intelligence would play a role in what level of spell could be cast, but it is not limiting it directly. Here's a chart:

	Mental Facility
Level	10 INT	11 INT	12 INT	13 INT	14 INT	15 INT	16 INT	17 INT	18 INT
1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2	2
3	2	4	4	4	4	4	4	4	4
4	2	6	6	6	6	6	6	6	6
5	2	6	9	9	9	9	9	9	9
6	2	6	12	12	12	12	12	12	12
7	3	7	13	17	17	17	17	17	17
8	3	9	15	23	23	23	23	23	23
9	3	9	18	26	31	31	31	31	31
10	3	9	18	30	40	40	40	40	40
11	4	10	19	31	41	47	47	47	47
12	4	12	24	36	46	52	52	52	52
13	4	12	24	36	46	58	58	58	58
14	4	12	24	40	55	67	67	67	67
15	5	13	25	41	56	68	75	75	75
16	5	15	30	46	61	73	87	87	87
17	6	16	31	47	67	85	99	99	99
18	6	16	31	47	67	85	99	107	107
19	6	16	31	51	71	89	103	119	119
20	6	16	31	51	71	95	116	132	132
21	6	16	31	51	71	95	116	132	141
22	6	18	33	53	78	102	123	139	157
23	6	18	36	60	85	109	130	154	172
24	7	21	39	63	88	118	146	170	188
25	7	21	39	63	88	118	146	178	205
26	7	21	42	66	96	126	161	193	220
27	7	21	42	66	96	126	161	201	237
28	8	24	45	69	99	135	177	217	253
29	8	24	45	73	108	144	186	226	271
30	8	24	48	76	111	153	195	243	288
31	8	24	48	76	111	153	202	150	304
32	9	25	49	81	121	163	212	268	322
33	9	27	54	86	126	174	223	279	342
34	9	27	54	90	130	178	234	298	361
35	9	27	54	90	135	189	245	309	381
36	9	27	54	90	135	189	252	324	405

To prepare a spell beyond their Mental Facility the magic-user must make an ability check versus Intelligence with a penalty equal to the spell level.

Still not sure what to do for miscasting spells, I'd like to get rid of adding extra dice rolling. On the other hand maybe it fits, as my modification of Clerical casting also requires dice rolling. Maybe I should only require a check for miscasting when the spell is interrupted or when casting a spell of a higher level than the magic-user's level? Hmmm . . .

Ok, I think I got it; a magic-user only needs to roll to see if they miscast up to certain levels. this is based on the spell/level chart and when a new spell level is given. So they no longer check for miscasting 1st level spells when reaching their 3rd caster level. 2nd level spells are automatically cast upon attaining 5th level. 3rd level spells are automatically cast upon attaining 7th level. 4th level spells are automatically cast upon attaining 9th level. 5th level spells are automatically cast upon attaining 11th level. 6th level spells are automatically cast upon attaining 15th level. 7th level spells are automatically cast upon attaining 18th level. 8th level spells are automatically cast upon attaining 21st level. 9th level spells are automatically cast upon attaining 26th level (beginning of the Master Set and quest for Immortaility).

Also instead of chances to Miscast based on percentile, I think it would be easier to us a Saving Throw vs Spells. The penalties would remain basically the same, 1 point per spell level, 2 points per AC granted by armor or shield, and each Intelligence score modifier point (+1 to +3) would give a bonus. The spell backfires instead of fizzling out if the roll lands on the Saving Throw number. Also, if a spell is interrupted it is automatically miscast, at which point a failure to Save vs Spells results in the spell backfiring.

Now I'm satisfied with the system, and I think I will use it. I feel it represents the fiction well, while still retaining the simplicity and essence of the D&D ruleset.