Using Merchant as a passive skill?

[WaterAndWindSpirit]

Hello everyone!

So let's assume we have a culture where early everyone haggles for nearly everything.

Would it be reasonable to not roll the Merchant skill and simply assume that the characters are haggling and get a good (or bad) price simply by comparing their Merchant skills and acting as if both sides rolled a 10, unless the PCs want to buy/sell something really unusual?

[weby]

In our campaign we use a similar static calculation (the actual selling mechanics are house ruled) for any mass selling/buying and selling/buying normal things. For important(read mostly as expensive) things the PCs tend to try to stack modifiers, use luck and similar things, so there we do the full rolling way.

I do not see why a similar thing could not work well with the GURPS default merchant rules.

[kirbwarrior]

For default situations, absolutely. It might have some effect on Wealth (or vice versa), but it sounds perfectly fair and merely bumps Merchant from a useful skill to often bought skill (like Stealth). I might even steal this idea since it's perfect for bazaar-cities and underworld trade cities where money is what you make of it.

Actually, thinking on it, it kind of sounds like a SOP that everyone has.

[whswhs]

GURPS Social Engineering recommends, for two merchants bargaining over a familiar commodity, or for any two people in a culture where haggling is commonplace, a Quick Contest of Merchant skill, with the price being adjusted 10% in favor of the winner. See p. 27.

[namada]

You could handle this as an optional specialization of the Merchant skill - Merchant (Haggling) IQ/Easy, or create a Technique for Haggling. RAW, you're only supposed to allow optional specializations for classes of goods, but IMO, Haggling is something many folks in many cultures do, and PC's will most likely engage in this as well, whereas the Merchant skill is very broad and only really appropriate for folks that make a living with it, so the specialization is how I handle it.