Variant class idea: Merchant

[ekolis]

Thought this might be a welcome addition to Chengband or any other variant...

New class: Merchant

Stats: Bonus to CHA (wheeling & dealing, of course) and STR (carrying around all those items); penalty to DEX (what do they need DEX for anyway?)

Skills: Poor at most skills, but good at perception/searching

Powers (success based on CHA):
* Restock - Force a shop to restock
* Bribe - Buy an item from a monster (can only buy what the monster would normally drop); monster becomes friendly and/or flees the level
* Appraise - Instantly pseudo-id an item; also reveals selling price of item
* Supply Chain - Teleport an item from the home
* Auction - Sell an item without being in a shop, but price is randomized from 1GP to actual selling price

[joelsanda]

I've thought it would be interesting to play a scavenger-type class, probably due in part to how I play Angband and variants. Bored one day at work years ago I fired up Angband in Borg mode and watched it run for a while over the day - some folks walking past my desk thought I was tailing a log file ;-)

But that's when I had a similar idea - it would be interesting to play a Rogue who would encounter situations, not unlike Borg mode running, and have a chance to pilfer items from the battle. Idea would be to generally avoid battle, but have some skills in fighting so you finish off the monster who is eating a Paladin that has some epic armor you could sell.

Each level would have a Borg-type encounter running and have the potential of taking a valuable item that would increase your score when sold. Maybe there could be a museum store in town so you could yell "This belongs in a museum!" as you grab something powerful.

[dzhang]

Actually, Chengband already has the "Merchant's Friend" special ability that you can pick as Humans or Demigods. This ability gives you two options:

(1) Shuffle Stock - forces the shop to restock for 5,000gp.
(2) Hold Item - Ensure that the item never gets replaced by restock for 10,000gp (so you can buy that =oSpeed(+14) when you save up the 5 million gold...)

Another ability is called "Loremaster" which basically *IDs* every item as soon as you pick it up.

There's also already a mutation called "Midas Touch" which nominally turns the item to gold, but what it actually does "sell" the item in the dungeon for 1/3 its normal price.

[ekolis]

Where do you get these "special abilities"?

[Malak Darkhunter]

Originally Posted by ekolis

Thought this might be a welcome addition to Chengband or any other variant...

New class: Merchant

Stats: Bonus to CHA (wheeling & dealing, of course) and STR (carrying around all those items); penalty to DEX (what do they need DEX for anyway?)

Skills: Poor at most skills, but good at perception/searching

Powers (success based on CHA):
* Restock - Force a shop to restock
* Bribe - Buy an item from a monster (can only buy what the monster would normally drop); monster becomes friendly and/or flees the level
* Appraise - Instantly pseudo-id an item; also reveals selling price of item
* Supply Chain - Teleport an item from the home
* Auction - Sell an item without being in a shop, but price is randomized from 1GP to actual selling price

I get it, your not trying to defeat morgoth in battle, but to swindle him out of his hard earned cash and items and make him broke, and then start him down the horrible path of no home, no money, and replace him as the merchant king of angband, and tax the town to death for trying to rip you off before-sounds like fun

[chris]

Originally Posted by ekolis

Where do you get these "special abilities"?

When you play a human and reach L30, you get to pick an ability of your choosing. For a demigod, you get to pick at L20 and again at L40.

The goal was to get people to play humans, I think. But the result is that we all now just play demigods

[buzzkill]

DAJ has a "tourist" class, that is weak, but might embody the merchant in some ways. I can't recall offhand what special abilities the tourist has.

[relic]

Merchants can be found in some older variants like PernAngband and its successors T.o.M.E, Conglomerate Angband, NTAngband and also UnAngband from versions 0.4.0 to 0.4.9 where it was a Thief-style. Look at their sources if you're interested in how they were implemented.

[ekolis]

Originally Posted by Malak Darkhunter

I get it, your not trying to defeat morgoth in battle, but to swindle him out of his hard earned cash and items and make him broke, and then start him down the horrible path of no home, no money, and replace him as the merchant king of angband, and tax the town to death for trying to rip you off before-sounds like fun

Hey, nobody said merchants can't fight - ever played Dragon Quest IV? Torneko Taloon wasn't half bad in combat

[joelsanda]

Originally Posted by Malak Darkhunter

I get it, your not trying to defeat morgoth in battle, but to swindle him out of his hard earned cash and items and make him broke, and then start him down the horrible path of no home, no money, and replace him as the merchant king of angband, and tax the town to death for trying to rip you off before-sounds like fun

This could open up an entirely new direction for Angband. We could call it Occupy Angband and occupy Morgoth's chambers with broke adventurers wearing Guy Fawkes masks, trying to defeat the Merchant Lord :-)