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View Full Version : Starting a trading company (3.5 Edition).



Tempest Fennac
2008-09-25, 03:41 AM
I signed up for this campaign a while back with my character's main aim being to start a trading company to combat human dominance in the area ( http://mydndgame.com/?action=campaign-view&campaign=67 . My character is a Phanaton Rogue.) I know the campaign probably won't get to the poin where my character will succeed (it's PBP), but I was curious about the sort of things a PC would need to do if they decided to start a trading company. I'm guessing that, as well as a lot of money, they would need a lot of Experts with Craft ranks, some with skills which are conntected to trading (eg Diplomacy/Bluff, Gather Information and Appraise), as well as Warriors (if not Fighters) to protect trade caravans, but what else would be useful for something like this?

Dracoma
2008-09-25, 03:53 AM
One thing that could potentially help you is to get a copy of a Map, with the location of cities and current trade routes marked down. *You may have better luck creating one than finding one, depending on the mood of the GM*

Another good idea would be to figure out some major factions in the area, and figure out special deals, mayhaps incentives or other such "bonus" offers that make your trade company special.

All in all, I believe the more you find out about the area/world in general, the better off you should be. Maybe you'll find out that most of the dangers are weather-based, in which case you'd want to have more weather-resistant carts and such.

Hope this helps, and good luck, it's good to see players wanting to do something OTHER than hack and slash!

Tempest Fennac
2008-09-25, 03:59 AM
Thanks.:smallsmile: It would be great if my character was able to get to the stage where he could do this (assuming the DM is okay with it; I think the other characters so far are humans, so they probably wouldn't be that willing to help him, so it would probably only happen when his adventuring career is over). I was thinking of using my staff to look into making deals with other factions. How much money do you think would be needed for establishing a reasonably large company like this? I was thinking of paying staff 2 GPs/day (at least initially). I was planning on having Cherokee (my character) using an Unlimited Teleporation wand as well, but I'm guessing that most of the stuff will need to be transported normally.

Dracoma
2008-09-25, 04:12 AM
Well, as for how much money each person would be making: If you're already deciding what classes (Expert/warrior/etc;) you'll need, maybe figure an average Profession skill per employee. (Using max ranks for the "best" employees, where shoddy employees may have only 1 rank in the skill.) From that, you can figure out (on average) what the employees would be making per week. The profession skill from the PHB says you'll be "earning about half your Profession check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work."

From there on, it's more or less just doing the math.

Tempest Fennac
2008-09-25, 04:17 AM
Thanks. Also, how long do you think it would take to "retrain" a Warrior as a Ranger or Fighter? I remember almost a year ago, someone mentioned a horror campaign where the party spent a week training a load of villagers who refused to leave an island which was being overrun by Undead and Alien-like creatures so that the villagers all had 1 PC class level each, but I'm not sure how it would work while being realistic in this case. (I think the party consisted of an Archivist, Wizard, Cleric, Dragon Shaman and 2 other people). If the DM allows it, Magewights would be great for staff as well (it would be better if Sending was a low-level spell, though).

bosssmiley
2008-09-25, 04:17 AM
I signed up for this campaign a while back with my character's main aim being to start a trading company to combat human dominance in the area ( http://mydndgame.com/?action=campaign-view&campaign=67 . My character is a Phanaton Rogue.) I know the campaign probably won't get to the point where my character will succeed (it's PBP), but I was curious about the sort of things a PC would need to do if they decided to start a trading company. I'm guessing that, as well as a lot of money, they would need a lot of Experts with Craft ranks, some with skills which are connected to trading (eg Diplomacy/Bluff, Gather Information and Appraise), as well as Warriors (if not Fighters) to protect trade caravans, but what else would be useful for something like this?

Capital. Product. Market. Trade Routes. Oh, and lots of back up for when the inevitable heavies demanding handouts (thieves, bandits, greedy tax farmers, etc) turn up.

Ignore the completely b0rked business rules in the DMG2 (most lucrative business: a continually recapitalised shack in the wilderness :smallconfused: ), use the ones from "Dungeonomicon" instead. They don't make Adam Smith angry ("Classical economist SMASH!") and actually bother to integrate trade with the existing D&D risk/reward system.


Thanks. Also, how long do you think it would take to "retrain" a Warrior as a Ranger or Fighter?

(asspull) 1d6 weeks of drill, route marches, sparring and getting chewed out by Archery Sgt Hartmann (all compressed into a training montage) ought to do the trick. :smallwink:

Tempest Fennac
2008-09-25, 04:28 AM
Thanks (the possible thugs/extorters are why I decided security would be useful). Due to my character's background, I was mainly planning on using Phanatons for crafting and trading, but I'm guessing I'll need some other creatures as security (the idea of a Phanaton drill Sgt barking out orders at much larger creatures is funny, though). I'll try lookin up that book (I may check the DMG 2 if I can't find the Dungeonomicon to see how ludacris the rules are (they sound worse then the "quick character creation" advice).

Ethdred
2008-09-25, 04:31 AM
First thing you need to do is to work out what you want to trade. You need something that is cheaper where you are than it is somewhere else, and where the costs of transport are less than this difference in price. What you are trading makes a big difference to how you trade - most notably in terms of bulk. Moving a few bags of high grade gem stones is a lot simpler than moving several tons of wheat. Let alone fresh fish! You don't necessarily need anyone with craft skills - you just need to be able to acquire your chosen trade good. If there's already a thriving industry then simply buy their produce - at least until you become strong enough to buy them all out and ruthlessly oppress them like the capitalist pig you really are :smallsmile: Legality comes into it as well - can you be a legit trader, or will you have to smuggle. Safety of the trade route will determine how much muscle you need to hire. Level of law and bureaucracy will affect how many admin staff you need. Do you need to pay off or otherwise deal with thieves' guilds and protection rackets? And what level of competition is there?

Tempest Fennac
2008-09-25, 04:38 AM
My character wouldn't really want to put anyone out of buisness (although, if I was willing to have him turn evil, which wouldn;'t work considering how bad at RPing I am, a giant flying squirrel which acts like '80s Vince Mcmahon would be funny), and he would prefer to do things legally. There seems to be a lot of wilderness in the area, so there probably won't be much beurocracy, and humans have a stranglehold on the area's trade. I'm guessing that they would try using unethical measures against my character's company, which is why having a lot of magic items would help him to trade.


EDIT: I was primarily thinking about trading manufactured goods, but food items which can be gorwn (or caught as far as fish goes) and other resources would be useful, especially if I could secure large supplies of them.

Ethdred
2008-09-25, 08:13 AM
A lot of it depends on your DM (as with so much!) and how far s/he wants to get involved with trading. I happen to be very keen on trading so would get well into this sort of thing - especially with the added twist of trying to break the human dominance. But trade depends on being able to buy low and sell high - that's it, basically. Game mechanics don't really come into it. You would need to find out from your DM what goods you could make a profit on. Trading in manufactures would require a lot of start up capital, and a factory or other base to do the work in. Personally I'd prefer to forget all that, and just buy the finished article (outsourcing vs vertical integration - which is better??).

Also, do you intend each caravan trip to be an adventure, or just an automatic thing that goes on in the background? Ditto negotiating the sale of your stuff.

If your DM's nice, s/he may give you a trade route that's currently unexploited to get you started (once you start making a profit, you're bound to attract the attention of rivals). Or at least, give you the opportunity of opening a new trade route - for example, killing a load of monsters that have made a mountain pass to dangerous to use, or negotiating with a tribe (possibly of non-humans who hate the humans as much as you do) to allow safe passage only to your caravans. Otherwise, you might find that all the opportunities are already taken and you have to muscle in to someone else's patch (not necessarily an evil act, depending how you do it).

Tempest Fennac
2008-09-25, 08:18 AM
That would work thanks. The first caravan would probably be an adventure, but the rest would probably be automatic. It may not end up happening at any point due to it being what I'd do with the character once the party broke up.

Keld Denar
2008-09-25, 10:52 AM
Drop over to gleemax, click on the handy links, and do a ctr+f for "walmart" or "wal-mart" or something like that. There are 2 links right there about how to abuse the rules in the DMGII and Powers of Faerun. Some of the income production numbers were totally ludacris (over 1 mil gold a day!), but almost require building a character solely to abuse that rule set. Still, you might be able to gleen some info on the system from there, and from those 2 books.

Tempest Fennac
2008-09-25, 12:11 PM
Okay thanks (I'll check those soon).