Mercantile

Mercantile (Int or Cha)

The Mercantile skill represents a character’s understanding of the market and its products and ability to convince merchants to offer better prices. Mercantile checks are INT-based, but the Haggle usage uses the higher of INT and CHA modifier.

Only characters Trained in Mercantile can succeed on attempts with a DC 20 or higher. Any result of 20 or higher by an untrained character is reduced to 20.

There are three special usages of the Mercantile skill:

Appraise

Appraising an item allows one to recognize the true cost of an item as well as its authenticity and marketable condition. The base DC to appraise an item is 10, but exotic and rare items as well as more complex or magical items will have higher DCs assigned by the DM.

A successful Mercantile check to appraise an item grants a +2 competence bonus to Identifying or Haggling over it.

Appraising an item takes one minute of study.

Haggle

Haggling with someone selling an item may allow you to lower its sale price and haggling with a buyer may allow you to increase its sale price. The base price of an item from the typical seller is listed in its entry. The base price for a player character to sell an item is one half the base price. Both prices are adjusted by the relationship value between the two characters.

Haggling is always an opposed Merchantile roll between buyer and seller. Success means the winner of the contested roll adjusts the selling price of the item 5% in their favor. Multiple Haggle checks can be made against the same target, but each one beyond the firsts lowers the target’s relationship value with the haggler unless they succeed on an opposed Persuasion check.

Identify

The Mercantile skill can be used to identify unknown objects. The Base DC to identify mundane objects is 15. It is unnecessary for character to have to identify items they’re already familiar with. The Base DC to identify non-mundane items such as magical or mechanical items is based on its Rarity as shown on the chart below.

Identifying an item takes 1 hour.