[johndallman]

Merchant is the IQ/Average skill of basic commerce: trading, selling and buying goods (or, presumably, services) at retail or wholesale. It's the core skill for salesman, hagglers and everyone who deals with trade practices. Its defaults are IQ-5, Finance-6 and Market Analysis-4, and Accounting, Administration, Economics, Finance, Market Analysis, and Propaganda have various defaults to Merchant. Merchant skill can be used to detect the works of Counterfeiting, and can be boosted by Connoisseur. Law skill can be very valuable for merchants, as can all the skills that default to Merchant.

Merchant is modified by a lack of Cultural Familiarity, Business Acumen talent, Colour Blindness, Compulsive Spending, Gullibility, Low Empathy and Shyness. Illegal goods give -3 (edit: not -2) unless you have Streetwise 12+, and trading in an unfamiliar area gives -2 until you get used to it. Merchants sometimes have a Rank structure of their own. Merchant can be used as an Influence skill, on other merchants, and on people already interested in buying your goods. The skill covers all kinds of goods by default, but optional specialisation is fairly common (and can remove the need for Streetwise for illegal goods).

On a successful roll, you can judge the value of something, find out where such goods are bought and sold, or estimate local market value. For simple haggling, roll a Quick Contest with the winner reducing or increasing the price by 10%, or see the more detailed rules on B562. If you know this skill you get +1 to reactions when trading, or +2 if you have skill 20+. That last clause, and the requirement for a specific Streetwise level, have both survived from 1e, and could be cleaned up.

Merchant is ubiquitous on templates for traders, and is common for face men and anyone who has to buy and sell. Caravan to Ein Arris has some examples, and Action implies it's the skill for bribing people. Banestorm has merchant's guilds and merchant [ad]venturers. DF makes the skill important in getting value for loot, some of which gives bonuses to skill when selling it, and in making Influence rolls boosted by expensive clothing. Low-Tech expands on that, and explains low-tech forgery and counterfeiting. Magic uses Merchant as an example for Steal Skill, and Power-Ups volumes 3, 6 and 7 have example Talents, Quirks and Wildcard skills. Social Engineering has a lot for Merchant: Styling of goods and clothing, its use for search rolls, expanded haggling, competition for customers between merchants, modifiers for advertising, word-of-mouth and price-cutting, and union negotiations. Space has more rules for trading in unfamiliar societies, and Spaceships 2 has rules on finding cargoes as a free trader. Thaumatology suggests a form of magic based on trading, and Urban Magics has divination of market prices.

I realise that I've never played a character who was primarily a trader. I've been in plenty of games where we had one in the party, but it's something I've missed out on personally. One more thing to try.

What have you awesomely bought or sold?