User:Diarik/Trader Proposal

The essential idea of the Trader is someone who is able to manipulate the flow of money for the sake of personal profit. However, this concept has been sorely unpronounced and untouched.

One excellent, and existing, choice has been contract versus marketplace. Traders currently have the choice to either profit by selling goods or by ferrying them. While this is certainly good, it can clearly be made better, especially as in both cases skill becomes negligible and pointless except for blind circling for its own sake.

Instead, I would recommend two things. The first is simpler: an NPC market, where a Trader pits their Trading skill against varying difficulties of customers and, through a series of manuevers not unlike your standard combat, either achieves or fails to make a sale. There should be market areas, accessible by non-Traders, certainly, as ways to train appraisal, but more decidedly for Traders to gain Trading skill through action rather than pacing a caravan.

The second is more complex and broad. At 50th circle, I would suggest that Traders be granted permission to attempt to join an exclusive club with pronounced benefits: banks. Through a manipulation of NPCs, they may or may not be able to secure entrance into a bank and thus gain access to the ability to make investments, give loans, and make money through this. At 80th circle, they should be granted permission to do this on a provincial scale, conceivably affecting taxation, criminal charges, and exchange rates.