A player of mine wants to invest his money in a business.

[Svata]

As thread title. As we are just starting, and they are starting at lv 8, so he has 27,000 Gp. Any advice for how I should adjucate this?

[OldTrees1]

DMG II has business rules IIRC
Have him hire an NPC to run the shop and make checks.

[Svata]

Those are kinda bad, but if that's all, I guess I'll just have to use them.

[Cirrylius]

Ultimate Campaign. It's for Pathfinder, but AFAICT the rules don't require any adjustment. The business rules encompass gold and non-gold profits, employees, improvements via building additions, modifiers for local conditions, random encounter events... pretty much everything you could want. The rules are a little abstracted (for example, you "buy" employees for a lump sum up front, each kind of employee or building feature gives you a flat increase in one or more kinds of profit check, and operating costs are automatically assumed to have already been taken out of your income), but for their simplicity there's an amazing amount of depth, and IMO it's vastly preferable to both the DMG2 and the Stronghold Builder's Guide.

[Vogonjeltz]

Those are kinda bad, but if that's all, I guess I'll just have to use them.

Bad things can happen to immobile assets like businesses. Fires, wars, competition. Might do to remind them of that.

[Svata]

Ultimate Campaign. It's for Pathfinder, but AFAICT the rules don't require any adjustment. The business rules encompass gold and non-gold profits, employees, improvements via building additions, modifiers for local conditions, random encounter events... pretty much everything you could want. The rules are a little abstracted (for example, you "buy" employees for a lump sum up front, each kind of employee or building feature gives you a flat increase in one or more kinds of profit check, and operating costs are automatically assumed to have already been taken out of your income), but for their simplicity there's an amazing amount of depth, and IMO it's vastly preferable to both the DMG2 and the Stronghold Builder's Guide.

Got a link to where I can find that?

[Silentone98]

Bad things can happen to immobile assets like businesses. Fires, wars, competition. Might do to remind them of that.

I second this.... probably best to remind them ingame, through example and after the money is already invested... How dare they go straight to a business and ignore my bank of glittergold!

... oh ummm.... damn those mischievous gnomes!

[Cirrylius]

Got a link to where I can find that?
I got a PDF from DriveThruRPG.com.


Bad things can happen to immobile assets like businesses. Fires, wars, competition. Might do to remind them of that.

I second this.... probably best to remind them ingame, through example and after the money is already invested...
Be careful not to overdo it. Having a big, public endeavor like that get ravaged by random disasters too often is like doing an slow-motion escort mission, except the target can't actually move on its own and costs money to heal.

[BWR]

Got a link to where I can find that?

The basic rules are found here (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCampaign/downtime.html).
Youll probably want a full copy of the book since this mostly covers the bare minimum of mechanics and leaves out some important descriptions and clarifications, but you can look at it and decide if it's worth your time and money (I think it is).

[Kudaku]

Adding to BWR's link, the PFSRD has a fairly comprehensive article (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/downtime) on Downtime. It's a little overwhelming at first, but once you get the hang of the terminology it's a fairly good system for running businesses, construction work, and even ruling your own town/city/kingdom/empire.

Alternately Pathfinder also has a much more simplistic system for Investments, but that takes a (very) long-term approach - the player is a passive partner and gets a payout (or pay loss) once a year. That rules system can be found here (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/ultimate-campaign---investments).

[hymer]

This may be completely useless to you, but it's something I think ought to be mentioned just in case: Ask the player to make a PC that is an adventurer, not an innkeeper (or whatever). You can run a game of Distillers & Drygoods some other time, this one is supposed to be about high adventure.

[Yahzi]

If you are running a medieval world (as opposed to a Renaissance world), then the short answer is: he can't.

There weren't "businesses" in the medieval world - corporations hadn't been invented yet. Working people worked for themselves. You couldn't open a franchise McTavern and pay someone to manage it for you. Either you managed it yourself or the person managing it would simply keep all the profit. What are you going to do, audit their books? They don't have books. The paper would soon cost more than the inn.

Income came from work, land, tax, or trade.

Obviously your PCs aren't going to work for a living.

They can buy land and rent it out for a cut of the harvest (share-cropping), assuming the local nobility lets them own land. At the end of every harvest season present them with several tons of wheat and a goat. Yay!

Tax is something only the government can do, and even then most of the nobility's income came from share-cropping (because they owned the land: that's what noble meant, it meant you owned land).

That leaves trade. Buy a bunch of rare stuff, escort it far away, trade it for other rare stuff, and bring that stuff home to sell for a profit. That's a great thing for a PC to do, but it's not a business, it's an adventure.

If you're running a Renaissance world, then I can't help you, because magic + Renaissance doesn't equal anything remotely like D&D.

[hemming]

The list of professional services and store types in cityscape are good for additional options/ideas. Cost to build a tavern, workspace for crafting, or storefront are pretty low in Stronghold builders guide - btwn that, the DMG and Arms & Equipment you can find rules for hiring all sorts of people.

If you want to be restrictive for some reason (assuming there is a fairly safe existing town/kingdom or whatever for his business to be in), make him take the leadership feat

If you want to keep it simple, you could allow him to 'pitch' an investment idea to an existing NPC. i.e. He gives a friendly NPC blacksmith enough money to add an additional forge and take on more apprentices, but expects a cut of the additional profits from output

[weckar]

If you're running a Renaissance world, then I can't help you, because magic + Renaissance doesn't equal anything remotely like D&D.Eberron would like a word with you. That setting RUNS on megacorporations.