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Old 06-28-2021, 04:03 AM   #1
FeiLin
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Sensible negotiations

Unless I'm mistaken, negotiating price as per SE26 incentivises PCs to make ridiculous offers to make the counterpart adjust their price by as much as possible.

For example, let's say I have an item worth $200, initial offer from a merchnant may be (after a reaction roll) $75 and acceptable $100. However, since his response will depend on the PCs answer, the best answer will be M, where M is a sufficiently large number (ie M ≫ $200), because the size of the next price change by the merchant will be a percentage of that. If M is large enough, it's possible to, say, lower M to half it's value, because that will make the NPC hit it's limited ceiling for what he will pay. That feels a bit cheap hack...

I know that haggling cultures in particular are prone to making outrageous offers, but is there an easy way around this? If the offer is outragously large, then shouldn't the response be outrageosly small? I could, of course, simply fiat the whole encounter an declare that "the merchant is unwilling to do business with you", but are there other options of tweaking the rules and still have a smooth bargaining process?
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