Business rules in DMG II

[veven]

It's obvious that these rules are pretty bad. Even a character built to run one of the businesses has a difficult time making any sort of reasonable profit.

I have been toying with the idea of running a sort of open-ended E6 game where players would start a business in a region (of my home-brewed campaign setting) with a lot of competing business and guilds and not a whole lot of unification. Obviously the game would involve a great deal more than just making the monthly profit check, there are a lot of fun opportunities here I'm sure (corporate espionage, slandering competitors, dealing with theft, etc). The issue is, if I use the rules in DMG II as is, I'm worried the players will begin to be more attracted to more traditional ways of making money (traditional in a D&D sense, grave robbing and all that).

I want the game to have some combat, diplomatic encounters, and lots of RP, but I want the profit check to actually mean something. The PC's actions will certainly affect the profit check but when you are making like...200gp a month that isn't very fun.

Is there any good homebrew for something similar or perhaps just some simple ideas to make the preexisting rules work better.

Some ideas I had
-Make weekly profit checks instead of monthly
-Change the numbers (to what I'm not sure)
-Let the PC's put profits back into the business for a bonus on the next check (there would have to be an upper limit to this otherwise they could just keep pumping their checks. Maybe for each 5% of profits put back into the business they get a +1 on the next check, works up to +5. Just spit-balling) Lulz, just realized that if you can get at least a +16 to your check you can just infinite loop this by taking a 10 and always pumping 25% back in for infinite money. Maybe if you can only do this once/month, and it gives you a penalty on the check the week after or something.

I'm thinking by making the checks weekly and giving a lot more opportunities to pump the check it would be easier to succeed, the problem then becomes how to keep the level of risk that was initially there.

I'm looking for any thoughts you beautiful playgrounders have on the subject. Thanks in advance!

[Morithias]

I recommend checking out the "Affiliations" rules in the Player's handbook 2. It would be a nice place to start with Violence checks, espionage checks, and..uh...I forgot the third type of check.

Adapting some of those might help.

[veven]

I recommend checking out the "Affiliations" rules in the Player's handbook 2. It would be a nice place to start with Violence checks, espionage checks, and..uh...I forgot the third type of check.

Adapting some of those might help.

I like this. I had thought about combining the two already so that would work. It does take some of the work out the PC's hands which is a little iffy since I don't just want the game to be a series of dice rolls. If they don't want to personally go out and bash heads or steal information a violence or espionage check would be a good substitute.

[Emperor Tippy]

How much effort do you want the PC's to put in? If you want to base the campaign around it then throw out the checks entirely.

The PC's go on a quest for the local mine owner to recover his son's fiance who was kidnapped on the way to the wedding, do so and they get to buy iron from him at cost. The PC's then hear about a gifted sword smith a few cities away who has gotten himself in a big jam, perhaps he made some drunken comments about the Kings wife being a whore or the like. The PC's visit and do a service for the King in exchange for the smiths life and removing said smith from the city; the PC's have him producing weapons in their city for them. Then the PC's do a bit of work to convince the local guard to buy their weapons.

If you are going to run a campaign around a business then that's the kind of thing you do.

[Tr011]

Assume a level 10 character.
Half-Minotaur Human Barbarian 7/Fighter 2 is a level 10 character who has several feats to spend. Assume he managed to get the class skills (pretty easy).

The business is a criminal organization which should fit the barbarian.
The capital for a metropolis is 64.000. The mansion is gained by a mission with the party wizard who spend some ranks in forgery and pumped his check with spells, the party rogue and the party face (there are thousand ways they could get a mansion without paying for it).
20 Employees won't be a problem either. Several ways to get them without the need to pay them yourself.

Let's check the profit check that will be made each month:
Taking 10
Intimidate 12 ranks: +12
Synergy from Bluff: +2
Charisma rolled of 14 + 6 enhancement: +5
Skill Focus (Intimidate): +3
Huge (due to permanent enlargement for 3k gp): +8
Fearsome (DotU) Armor Enhancement: +5 enhancement
MW Tool enchanted with +10 competence: +12
Owner has at least 10 ranks in both secondary skills: +3 total
Business is located in a metropolis: +4
Business is a high-risk busines: -4
Specialist is on staff: +2
A business partner successful aids during the term (party's face take 10 for 30 total): +4

So you end up with a total check of 66. That's 2050gp in one month. So you would need 2 and a half year to gain back your capital you invested. That seems pretty OK to me, because this character did not spend to much on the business and it is more for fun than for WBLmancy. Of course, you can get the check a lot higher with more optimization and even in the regular progress of gaining levels this character will increase his bonus. Inherent bonus to charisma, increase the competence bonus to +20, find a Luck Stone, put 5 more ranks in primary and secondary skills and the result increases by +21 (this would be level 15 then).

[Suddo]

Don't look too deep in the D&D economy. They make the world way too bleak compared to how the rules are. I mean justifying why a 50 year old human is only a level 2 commoner while adventures level to 20 in a summer is insane, beyond the fact why they didn't try retraining into expert of something.
Plus you can buy people for like 5sp a day (or something). I mean read this: Link (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19573350/D38;D_Commoners_Make_Plenty_of_Money).
If you are going to do something like this your going to have to homebrew a large portion of the stuff. I mean you could buy a hundred people for 5sp a day have them craft and make more money a week then you paid them, this becomes an infinite cycle until you run out of people at which point you start mating people like cattle to just have more rolls. Oh and don't forget you could always train them to be useful classes, like Wizards or Bards. It becomes silly fast once you examine it.

[veven]

Yeah the silliness has certainly not escaped me...Is there any sort of game (preferably PNP but not necessarily) that would emulate running a business or group of business is a fantasy world (or the real word...I guess I could adapt it)? Then I could just pop it into my preexisting world and use that instead. I dunno.