Subject: MYSTARA-L Digest - 17 Mar 2004 to 18 Mar 2004 (#2004-69) From: Automatic digest processor Date: 19/03/2004, 19:00 To: Recipients of MYSTARA-L digests Reply-to: Mystara RPG Discussion There are 6 messages totalling 490 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Spreading Mystara using music 2. Merchant class in Darokin gaz (3) 3. Merchant Prince resend 4. Merchant Prince resend (comments) ******************************************************************** The Other Worlds Homepage: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/OtherWorlds.asp The Mystara Homepage: http://www.dnd.starflung.com/ To unsubscribe, send email to LISTSERV@ORACLE.WIZARDS.COM with UNSUB MYSTARA-L in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 14:48:32 +0100 From: =?iso-8859-1?q?la=20Volpe?= Subject: Re: Spreading Mystara using music > Well, I'm trying to convince an important brazilian > Metal composer and > singer to get into gaming, into Mystara. He is > leader and founder of a band > called "Shaman" Andrè Matos, ex-Angra... 8-) Good luck! Giulio ______________________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Mail: 6MB di spazio gratuito, 30MB per i tuoi allegati, l'antivirus, il filtro Anti-spam http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/?http://it.mail.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 06:52:34 -0800 From: "Ohad Shaham (Morphail)" Subject: Re: Merchant class in Darokin gaz Thanks Havard and Chris for your remarks. I still didn't finish the spells for the class but I think what I have so far is worth publishing. Havard, about the Noble/Aristocrat class name, its Aristocrat in 3.5 edition and noble in 3.0 (not that it matters). Also, as you said, the class is not powerful enough and therefor I won't put a limit of 6th level on the multi-class. This class (like Warrior, Expert and Noble) is less effective in combat and most adventuring situations (Oh, this frightening ogre holds a huge mace, I say its worth 120 daros, ouch!), but still I can see campaigns in which it will get some PC usage.So here goes:The Merchant Prince of DarokinThe mysterious Darokinian traders have always been accused of possessing a sixth sense and other magical powers. How else could their success be so overwhelming? It is true that for hundreds of years witches in the lands now known as the Republic of Darokin have penetrated the oldest and richest merchant houses and gav e the rulers of those houses access to arcane powers. Today the Merchant Princes (and princesses!) of Darokin have perfected their art to such extent than they have become masters of most commerce held in the Known World. The Merchant Prince of Darokin prestige class may not seem as attractive to players because of the lack of power it possesses in combat in comparison to other prestige classes. But to PC's and NPC's who take an interest in driving their caravan through the world, discovering the rarest of goods and forming their own business empire, this class is invaluable.Hit Die: d4Requirements:Abilities: Charisma 12+, Wisdom 12+Skills: Appraise 7 ranksSpecial: be part of an established Darokinian merchant house and finding a sponsor within that house.Note that you do not have to have an existing heroic character class in order to multi-class into Merchant Prince. Non-adventuring experts and nobles are the most common merchant princes.Class Skills:Appraise, Bluff, Craft, Dipl omacy, Forgery, Gather Information, Handle Animal, Knowledge (Geography), Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (Finance), Perform, Profession, Ride, Sense Motive, Speak Language.Skill ranks per level: 8 +int modifierClass Features:All of the following are features of the Merchant Prince of Darokin prestige class:Weapon and Armor proficiency:The Merchant Prince of Darokin gains proficiency with all light armor and simple weapons. Spells:The Merchant Prince gains arcane spells in much the same way as a wizard does. However the list of spells he can choose from is limited (see below). A Merchant Prince adds her charisma bonus to the DC of his spells but gains bonus spells according to her wisdom score. The minimum wisdom score needed to cast a spell is 10+ the level of the spell.Bargainer: at 1st level a Merchant Prince of Darokin gets a +3 competence bonus to Diplomacy, Sense Motive and Bluff skill checks when applied to a business transaction. This competence bonus replaces (and does not stack with) feats such as Negotiator when appropriate.Merchant's Knowledge: the Merchant Prince is as exposed to various tidbits of information as a bard is. At 2nd level he gains the same special ability as Bardic Knowledge.Loyal Employees: starting at 3rd level, the Merchant Prince of Darokin can attract 1 loyal employee per level that wants to work and learn from the famous trader. The Merchant Prince gains 30% of these junior traders income in exchange for tutoring in the various arts of the trade, most of the time she will have to pay them salaries. See more on cohorts in the Dungeon Master Guide.Resist Mercantile Magic: starting at 5th level the Merchant Prince gains 50% magic resistance against magic used against her in any business transaction. This affects only magic that targets the Merchant Prince directly as with normal magic Resistance (a magic missile shot at a draft horse to slow him down is not effected). At each level above 5th the Merchant Prince gains 10% more to her magic resistance until total immunity is reached at 10th level.Master Bargainer: at 7th level the Merchant Prince skills of negotiation increase. The competence bonuses gained in Bargainer increase to +6.Business Empathy: at 9th level the Merchant Prince of Darokin gains a marvelous sixth sense in regard to the business he/she owns. She gains an empathic note whenever something unusual happens to her property. For instance, thieves break into her vault back home, an employee has just lost 10,000 gp, a caravan was ambushed and so on. This supernatural ability is available constantly as long as the Merchant Prince and her property are on the same plane of existence. The Merchant Prince of DarokinLevel Base Attack Saves Special Spells per day For Ref Wil lvl1 lvl2 lvl3 Lvl41 0 0 0 +2 Bargainer 2 0 2 +1 0 0 +3 Merchant's Knowledge 2 1 3 +1 +1 +1 +3 Loyal Employees 3 2 0 4 +2 +1 +1 +4 4 2 1 5 +2 +1 +1 +4 Resist mercantile magic 5 3 1 6 +3 +2 +2 +5 6 4 2 07 +3 +2 +2 +5 Master Bargainer 6 4 2 18 +4 +2 +2 +6 7 5 3 19 +4 +3 +3 +6 Business Empathy 8 6 4 210 +5 +3 +3 +7 8 7 4 3Spell Lists:1st level Merchant Prince spells: Calm Animals (Domesticated* only), Count Coins, Evaluate, Ignore Road, Know Direction, Predict Weather, Resist Climate, Speak with Animals (Domesticated* only), Trust2nd level Merchant Prince spells: Charm Animal (Domesticated* only ), Check Load, Crowd Summoning, Detect Ambush, Detect Magic, Eagle's Splendor, Fox's Cunning, Hold Animal, Identify, Locate Object, Owl's Wisdom, Quicken Pace, Savior Faire, Silver Tongue, Whispering wind3rd level Merchant Prince spells: Charm Animal (all animals), Charm Person, Discern Lies, Find Traps, Inventory, Smuggling, Nondetection, See Invisibility,4th level Merchant Prince spells: Accounting, Check Caravan, Clairaudiance/Cla irvoyance, Divination, Embezzle, Locate Creature, Obscure Object, Sending, Tongues * Domesticated animal refers to any animal trained to work for humans. This doesn't have to be limited to mules and oxen. For example spells could also work on a triceratops if that creature is somehow used to pull a cart. Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 10:15:45 -0500 From: Chris Cherrington Subject: Re: Merchant class in Darokin gaz Now to update the rules of trade to 3.5e. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 07:40:40 -0800 From: "Ohad Shaham (Morphail)" Subject: Merchant Prince resend I am sending again as HTML because it came out smooshed. Hope this will go better. The Merchant Prince of Darokin The mysterious Darokinian traders have always been acused of posessing a sixth sense and other magical powers. How else could their success be so overwhelming? It is true that for hundreds of years witches in the lands now known as the Republic of Darokin have penetrated the oldest and richest merchant houses and gave the rulers of those houses acess to arcane powers. Today the Merchant Princes (and princesesses!) of Darokin have perfected their art to such extent than they have become masters of most commerce held in the Known World. The Merchant Prince of Darokin prestiege class may not seem as atractive to players because of the lack of power it posesses in combat in comperasion to other prestiege classes. But to PC's and NPC's who take an intrest in driving their caravan through the world, discovering the rarest of goods and forming their own buisness empire, this class is invalueble. Hit Die: d4 Requierments: Abilities: Charisma 12+, Wisdom 12+ Skills: Appraise 7 ranks Special: be part of an established Darokinian merchant house and finding a sponsor within that house. Note that you do not have to have an existing heroic character class in order to multiclass into Merchant Prince. Non-adventuring experts and nobles are the most common merchant princes. Class Skills: Appreise, Bluff, Craft, Diplomacy, Forgery, Gather Information, Handle Animal, Knowledge (Geography), Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (Finance), Perform, Proffesion, Ride, Sense Motive, Speak Language. Skill ranks per level: 8 +int modifier Class Features: All of the following are features of the Merchant Prince of Darokin prestiege class: Weapon and Armor proficiency: The Merchant Prince of Darokin gains proficiency with all light armor and simple weapons. Spells: The Merchant Prince gains arcane spells in much the same way as a wizard does. However the list of spells he can choose from is limited (see below). A Merchant Prince adds her charisma bonus to the DC of his spells but gains bonus spells accourding to her wisdom score. The minimum wisdom score needed to cast a spell is 10+ the level of the spell. Brgainer: at 1st level a Merchant Prince of Darokin gets a +3 competence bonus to Diplomacy, Sense Motive and Bluff skill checks when applied to a buisness transaction. This competence bonus replaces (and does not stack with) feats such as Negotiator when appropriate. Merchant's Knowledge: the Merchant Prince is as exposed to various tidbits of information as a bard is. At 2nd level he gains the same special ability as Bardic Knowledge. Loyal Employees: starting at 3rd level, the Merchant Prince of Darokin can attract 1 loyal employee per level that wants to work and learn from the famous trader. The Merchant Prince gains 30% of these junior traders income in exchange for tutoring in the various arts of the trade, most of the time she will have to pay them saleries. See more on cohorts in the Dungeon Master Guide. Resist Mercantile Magic: starting at 5th level the Merchant Prince gains 50% magic resistance against magic used against her in any buisness transaction. This affects only magic that targets the Merchant Prince directly as with normal magic resisstance (a magic missile shot at a draft horse to slow him down is not effected). At each level above 5th the Merchant Prince gains 10% more to her magic resisstance until total immunity is reached at 10th level. Mastaer Bargainer: at 7th level the Merchant Prince skills of negotiation increase. The competence bonuses gained in Bargainer increase to +6. Buisness Empathy: at 9th level the Merchant Prince of Darokin gains a marvellous sixth sense in regard to the buisness he/she owns. She gains an empathic note whenever something unusual happens to her property. For instance, thieves break into her vault back home, an employee has just lost 10,000 gp, a caravan was ambushed and so on. This supernatural ability is available constantly as long as the Merchant Prince and her property are on the same plane of existance. The Merchant Prince of Darokin Level Base Attack Saves Special Spells per day For Ref Wil lvl1 lvl2 lvl3 Lvl4 1 0 0 0 +2 Bargainer 2 0 2 +1 0 0 +3 Merchant's Knowledge 2 1 3 +1 +1 +1 +3 Loyal Employees 3 2 0 4 +2 +1 +1 +4 4 2 1 5 +2 +1 +1 +4 Resist mercantile magic 5 3 1 6 +3 +2 +2 +5 6 4 2 0 7 +3 +2 +2 +5 Master Bargainer 6 4 2 1 8 +4 +2 +2 +6 7 5 3 1 9 +4 +3 +3 +6 Buisness Empathy 8 6 4 2 10 +5 +3 +3 +7 8 7 4 3 Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - More reliable, more storage, less spam ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 09:12:18 -0800 From: Andrew Theisen Subject: Re: Merchant class in Darokin gaz "Ohad Shaham (Morphail)" wrote: I am working on converting the Merchant class into a prestiege class for D&D3.5. Now that I am almost done I can see how it's much harder than it looks. But someone had to do it! So I am almost done. Before I send it to the list however, I would like to know if anybody have ever USED merchants in his/her OD&D campaign. If so, how was it like? How did the Merchant spells worked in your campaign? The plan is to introduce the Merchant Prince of Darokin as a prestiege class open to those of the apropriate ancestry even if they are not classic "adventurer types". So this prestiege class can be multiclassed into from NPC classes such as Noble and Expert. I attempted to do something like this several times not so long ago (and in fact, I just recently did a Merchant-Prince of Minrothad class that I should post one of these days soon). The problems I ran into were: 1) The Merchant in Gaz11 gains experience through monetary acquisition, which isn't compatible with the experience rules in 3.x 2) A lot of the "spells" they gain just weren't powerful enough at the levels they were listed. 3) The whole idea of the merchant as a prestige class seemed... wrong, when I got down to it. My idea eventually was to create a 20 level Merchant class (something like the expert or rogue) for PCs to take, and have the Darokin Guild Merchant be a prestige class (that would best be attained by taking levels in the merchant class, but that anyone could eventually attain). That, or just use the Rogue, but with an emphasis on charisma skills. Seems there were some other problems, but that was the gist of it. There was actually a discussion about it on the list here for a bit, I'll see if I can dig up any of the posts... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 09:53:16 -0800 From: Andrew Theisen Subject: Merchant Prince resend (comments) This looks interesting, but some of the mechanics seem a bit strange. If you don't mind some feedback, let me have a look offhand: "Ohad Shaham (Morphail)" wrote: The Merchant Prince of Darokin The intro looks really good. I like that you've connected it specifically to Darokin, as opposed to just being a "generic" prestige class (I really don't like those- IMO, prestige classes need to be specific and campaign related. Merchant Prince of Darokin- okay; Hunter of the Dead- not so much. But again, that's just my opinion.) The only suggestion I might make is to change the name- something like Darokin Guild Merchant, just because Merchant-Prince seems more of a Minrothad title. But it's a minor detail, and doesn't really matter either way. > Requierments: > Abilities: Charisma 12+, Wisdom 12+ I'm curious why you went with ability score requirements here. Most Prestige Class design suggestions say that minimum ability scores are not a good design choice. You're going to cut off a lot of possible characters with this. Basically, someone would have to plan on taking this PrC from 1st level so that they could allocate their points properly, and anyone that didn't would be shut out. I think you could simulate this just as well by requiring a different skill set. > Sklls: Appraise 7 ranks Here's where I would suggest some changes. Appraise 7 ranks seems fine. Bear in mind that, by itself, you would only need to be a 4th level Rogue, Expert, or Bard to get this requirement (thus taking the PrC as a 5th level character). Any other class is going to have to multiclass, or else wait until 11th level to take this PrC- which is fine; it's much more suited to the above three classes. I'd also suggest something like: Diplomacy (for negotiations) 7 ranks, Sense Motive (for negotiations) 7 ranks. I'd probably toss in Profession (any) 4 ranks, for good measure. Not sure about the exact required ranks here, but I think this is a good start. Sense Motive and Profession should cover the idea that you need a high Wisdom, and Diplomacy covers the concept of needing a high Charisma. This way, you're not keeping the ugly 3 Cha Half-orc from joining (no discrimination here!), but he's not going to be nearly as successful as that 18 Cha elf. Another suggestion (for 3.5) might be to require the Negotiation feat. > Class Skills: > Appreise, Bluff, Craft, Diplomacy, Forgery, Gather Information, Handle Animal, Knowledge (Geography), Knowledge (Local), Knowledge (Finance), Perform, Proffesion, Ride, Sense Motive, Speak Language. I'd probably add Concentration and Decipher Script. > Skill ranks per level: 8 +int modifier This seems a little much for the Merchant, especially given his other class abilities. 8 points is generally reserved for Rogues. I'd probably tone it down to 6+Int mod per level, but I'm open to negotiation on this point. :) > Spells: > The Merchant Prince gains arcane spells in much the same way as a wizard does. >However the list of spells he can choose from is limited (see below). A Merchant Prince >adds her charisma bonus to the DC of his spells but gains bonus spells accourding to >her wisdom score. The minimum wisdom score needed to cast a spell is 10+ the level >of the spell. This seems a bit awkward to me. I'd pick either Wisdom or Charisma as the defining ability score here, and just stick with that. I'd probably just go with Charisma frankly, but I'm curious as to why you picked Wisdom? > Brgainer: at 1st level a Merchant Prince of Darokin gets a +3 competence bonus to >Diplomacy, Sense Motive and Bluff skill checks when applied to a buisness >transaction. This competence bonus replaces (and does not stack with) feats such as >Negotiator when appropriate. Hmm. Curious why it wouldn't stack? Also, in my design, I was thinking of "mimicking" the Broker Points by having increasing adjustments to skills like these during business transactions. (ie, something like +2 at 1st, +4 at 5th, +6 at 10th, or something). That adds some incentive to keep pursuing the class, rather than just grabbing a level, getting some immediate benefits, and going back to the main class. > Merchant's Knowledge: the Merchant Prince is as exposed to various tidbits of >information as a bard is. At 2nd level he gains the same special ability as Bardic >Knowledge. You might want to mention that this stacks with levels of any class with this feature (such as Bard levels). > Loyal Employees: starting at 3rd level, the Merchant Prince of Darokin can attract 1 >loyal employee per level that wants to work and learn from the famous trader. The >Merchant Prince gains 30% of these junior traders income in exchange for tutoring in >the various arts of the trade, most of the time she will have to pay them saleries. See >more on cohorts in the Dungeon Master Guide. Is this essentially giving them the Leadership feat for free? And I'm not clear precisely how the income/salary thing works. > Resist Mercantile Magic: starting at 5th level the Merchant Prince gains 50% magic >resistance against magic used against her in any buisness transaction. This affects >only magic that targets the Merchant Prince directly as with normal magic resisstance >(a magic missile shot at a draft horse to slow him down is not effected). At each level >above 5th the Merchant Prince gains 10% more to her magic resisstance until total >immunity is reached at 10th level. This sounds good (ie, simulating the "spells" from Gaz11 by giving an ability), but the mechanics seem a bit odd. I'd suggest either using the existing mechanics for Spell Resistance (ie, SR 5+ level or something), or else just giving a bonus to save versus (say) Enchantment/Charm spell effects. Also, you might want to mention if this is a Supernatural, Spell-Like, or Extraordinary ability. > Mastaer Bargainer: at 7th level the Merchant Prince skills of negotiation increase. The >competence bonuses gained in Bargainer increase to +6. Oh- you did scale this. Ignore my comments about this ability above. :) The 9th level ability seems interesting- adds a lot to the "sixth sense" idea of Darokin merchants- but I notice there's no 10th level ability? Maybe move the 9th level ability up. I think if someone sticks with a PrC all the way through, they should get an added "bonus" for sticking it out. Also, you avoid any "front loading", in this case, taking (say) the first 3 levels of the class, and then jumping back to a more "mainstream" class. Anyway, just some suggestions. Nice work! I'll have to try and dig up the Merchant Prince of Minrothad for everyone to take a look at (I just did it a couple weeks ago, so it should be around...) ------------------------------ End of MYSTARA-L Digest - 17 Mar 2004 to 18 Mar 2004 (#2004-69) ***************************************************************