Marketplace

[beshears]

one of my players has a habit of stealing everything in sight. their going into a market next session, and I want to work out what each merchant has (how much gold, what goods, etc) so that he can feel free to steal it. I've got guards around, so it may end in a fight, but I need to at least work it out. any suggestions for quasi randomly generating merchant stocks?

[Omnicrat]

We need more information. What level are you? How wealthy is the market? What types of items are going to be available for sale?

[anddrival]

Product information is important in order to make a goo rational decision. Kindly update with some of the more features related to it.
I will be thankful to you.

[Xeratos]

Pages 51-56 of the DMG 3.5 has several tables for randomly rolling wealth in coins, gems, and art, as well as the value of some more mundane objects. I would suggest you pre-roll up 3 or 4 merchants for him to work with from there.

Incidentally, here's an idea to make the game a bit more interesting then slight of hand vs. spot:

Bluff checks to distract the merchant/guards. Don't tell your thief whether or not he's succeeded, just that he'll get a circumstance bonus to his next sleight of hand if he has, and a penalty to it for drawing attention to himself in a suspicious manner if he's failed.

Sense Motive checks to determine how closely he's being watched. Passing allows him to know when a guard's attention has wandered, failing means he might try to make his lift at exactly the wrong moment (big circumstance bonus to the guard's checks).

Appraise checks to know what's really worth stealing and what's a cheap imitation.

Disguise checks to avoid having his face become well known (the merchant is going to realize he's lost goods eventually, and if your friend is a klepto who's repeatedly robbing people, he doesn't want to have a familiar face).

Forgery to craft notes claiming to be a representative of a well known local nobleman, and that payment will be forthcoming at a later date.

Open Lock checks to get into lockboxes containing the merchant's earnings for the day.


Basically, my point is that there are tons of ways to use the skills provided in the game to do more than roll a boring, mundane sleight of hand vs. spot check. So have fun with it. Also, if you wanted a laugh, while he's robbing the merchant stalls, another, better, thief is robbing him. So suffer all who poach on guild territory!

[Hanuman]

http://donjon.bin.sh/pathfinder/magic/shop.html

Donjon is a good site, it's usually the first thing that I go to before making a campaign.

Use some NPC generators too. Best thing to do is just generate how much gold they have and divy that gold up into items too.