Social Engineering: Haggling - Broken?

[gjc8]

Originally Posted by Bruno

If I'm trying to sell you a new mercedes and your initial offer is one penny, I'm going to be insulted. That's not haggling, that's mockery.

That's true. But depending on context, an initial counteroffer of 50% would not be out of the question.

The question, of course, is context. Run the same negotiation where the merchant's initial offer in $1500, and you get something more reasonable. So where do you draw the line of where the merchant simply refuses to negotiate?

Define the difference between the initial asking price and the final price as the spread. You'd have to play around with the numbers to figure out what a good place would be, but I'd probably say if the difference between their initial counteroffer and the merchant's final price is more than twice the spread, it's an inappropriate offer.

If the merchant receives an inappropriate offer, they won't change their asking price at all. The PCs can make a second counter-offer. This requires a Merchant roll at -1 per inappropriate offer and -1 for each multiple of the spread their new offer is below the final asking price. If they make the Merchant roll and the new offer is within the right range, haggling begins with the new offer counting as the PC's first offer. If the new counter-offer is still inappropriate, repeat the process (with accumulating penalties to the merchant roll) until the PC makes an appropriate offer or fails a roll. If the PC fails a Merchant roll, the NPC is done negotiating: the PC can take the asking price or leave.

You should give the PCs some ability to determine approximately what the spread is in an initial encounter, so they can avoid insulting merchants this way if they're careful. This might be external to the negotiation, like looking up the invoice price to help in a car negotiation. It might be culturally determined, so that most spreads, say, 10-25% percent of the asking price in a given campaign (and anyone with Merchant knows this). You might allow a successful Merchant roll to sound out an unfamiliar negotiation, and get the spread (approximately; say add 1d-3 x 25%).