Friday, February 17, 2017

Stronghold Expansion: Traders & Merchants [Second Draft]

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Bet you wondered where I went, didn't you?

One of the difficult parts of updating old content is when I've switched over to a new template since making it. For the previous version of this project, I had my second-iteration template. Now, I'm using a third-iteration template with different sizing and standardization that pretty much exactly replicates the PHB. That's great and all, but what it really means is that I need to re-do every page of a project if I want consistent sizing and aesthetics with my newest content.

And that's a problem if a project is 23 pages long. Even more so, when you inflate the project to 32 pages after working on it.

Almost twice as long as the core Strongholds rules, this is now officially the biggest project I've ever worked on, and hopefully contains a merchant for just about every situation.

What made this pile of insanity worth doing? Well, since you asked...

CHANGELOG:

  • Added 8 new merchants, including legendary merchants, rare super-merchants a player can stumble upon once in a lifetime!
  • Added new and altered items to all merchant inventories, to make the lists more representative of what they're supposed to be. 
  • Added a Quantity column, so players will have a hard limit on how many throwing knives they can purchase. 
  • Removed Very Poor and Very Good merchants, folding them over into Poor and Good qualities.
  • Merchants are now determined by a d100 roll, allowing for food merchants to show up more often than potion merchants.
  • Fixed textual errors referring to incorrect sources and similar.
CONCERNS:
  • I've added more than I've ever added to just about any project to date. I'm betting there'll be a mistake or two somewhere.
  • I might need to change the probability numbers on the legendary merchants, to make encountering a time traveler or the devil himself significantly less common than say, an enchantments merchant.
WHAT I LEARNED:
  • I'm not looking forward to updating the Strongholds core to the new template, I'll tell you that much. Although it'll probably be way easier than this, tables are an absolute nightmare to format. 

11 comments:

  1. Please, always keep working. Your ideas are splendid, and your work is appreciated.

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    1. Seconded. I'll be using this in my campaign.

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    2. Thirded! I am in love with all your stuff - especially your SH systems!

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    3. Fourthed! Just about to give my party their first stronghold.

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    4. Fifthed! This stuff is, bar-none, the most enjoyable homebrew I've ever seen.

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  2. I first find you through reddit but now I just follow your blog because I know I'll always find good stuff. I'm very careful about what homebrew I allow but your work automatically goes in my big book of approved homebrew

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  3. Also, I'm activity using the Stronghold and Merchants rules in my campaign

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  4. When I read that very poor quality merchants were gone, my initial reaction was "Noooo! Not my Burlap-Sacks-Sold-As-Clothing Kobold Merchant!"
    Forgot that he is actually an atrocious quality merchant. Phew!

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  5. Amazing job!
    It's a pity you can't make a search in Acrobat cuz the .pdf text is not selectable.

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  6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  7. I know I'm a bit late, but I do have a question. Specifically, the legendary merchants' warlock level pact things. Can that go beyond 20th level or is it a multiclass without XP? What if you're already a warlock? Do you get extra slots?

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