alright, i want to add in an NPC who will sell the plays things such as "bottled courage" and half magical amulets. BUT i want him to charismatic enough that they won't murder him the first time they get ripped off.
i have the benefit of players who i haven't played any tricks on yet so they're gullible, and all but one of them aren't murderhobos
let him give useful advice when they buy shit
Have him getting wasted with one or more of the pcs. Harder to kill drinking buddies.
and let him have good explenations why it didn't worked
>and let him "refund" the item
"oy vey the portion didn't worked well? may wou take a free amulet of eloquence"
>discworld comic
Gonna need SAUCE on that!
Do you mind him being magical?
Have them work, just not as well as advertised.
>This here, my good man, is and honest-to-gods bonafide one-of-a-kind Ammulet of EEEEEEMORTALITY, made for a king but your's for only 30 gold! A man wearing this can take a knife to the neck or flail to the face, walk it off, and go home to make love to his wife until morning!
>It only adds 6 temporary HP, which is a lot for a peasant with 4 HP normally but barely worth noting for a competant adventure.
unfortunately i don't know, i was researching dibblers and found this picture.
it can't hurt, what ya got?
Having him have some other resource that makes him more valuable alive than dead is helpful - he's well-connected because his products find a lot of buyers in a certain trade or social caste for example.
Make the loss of money minor. Keep it small enough and players will often pay the NPC, if well-played, for the privilege of having him around to amuse them.
Motivation helps. If he's generally good-natured and his scams are small (see above), people will give him leeway. If it seems like he's laughing at the people he rips off behind his back, he is much more vulnerable.
Do what Shas'O did for the Deffwotch games.
Make exactly ONE merchant in the game. Make it so that he always appears when the players need him, in a place from which he should not be able to enter or exit. He always has the items they need under his coat. The coat is not magical. He is not using teleport. He is not an illusion. He simply IS, and he is the only merchant to which they can go outside of extreme circumstances.
The players will never, ever fuck with him, because they will never want to know what happens when he dies.
He's a competent enough fence to fund the lawyers and bodyguards he needs to keep his ass out of jail. Some of his stuff goes on sale legitimately.
He can get the players stuff they don't have the connections or money to buy.
Here's an idea: He has a background being a bard. When he sells things, he uses spells to simulate the effects of his wares in order to trick people into thinking they're the real deal. When confronted, he can easily show the people that his wares do work and that the user must have done something wrong or spoiled the ware in some way.
the title is GUARDS GUARDS GUARDS
This.
>Potion of strength
>Party comes back pissed
>How did you use the potion?
>Drank it
>Well that's why it didn't work, you are supposed to rub it on the muscles you want to be stronger
>How about this, to make up for this confusion I will offer you this crown of wisdom for half price
The main things are to never admit fault and to never blame the PCs and to cover your ground when caught. It wasn't your fault the PCs used your potion wrong, nor is it their fault, it is simply a case of poor communication and assumptions on both sides. But since it didn't work I will offer you a refund or store credit.
Yea, make it obvious that he has uses other than what he sells. He's their (relatively) innocent connection to the underworld. He'd happily give information on the local crime boss to the players for a small fee (or just for not killing him). Also make him nigh unkillable like Turk from Daredevil, or Mickey Doyle in Boardwalk Empire of course that last one didn't last forever
>You're saying that the Crown of Wisdom doesn't work?
>Tell you what, I'll have the local enchanter take a look at it for you
>He'll take 1000gp to fix it, but I like you guys so I'm willing to pay half of the cost for you
>Meanwhile, please take this Amulet of Vigor free of charge as a sign of my goodwill
Not that user but thanks
Prices should be dirt cheap by adventurer standards.
Item effects should be semi random, like roll 1d100 to see if its not crap I followed by a roll for item effect.
Let the bargin bin boot of speed actually be a boot of spell reflection(boot targeted spells only) .
If anyone bitches about weirdness, he bulk buys the leftovers from the enchanting classs at the local university but lacks the funds to ID the items.
"It didn't work huh? You loved the person you had sex with, right? Hang on a minute I think we're on two different definitions of "vigor" here. Alright, here's an Armor of Life Saving. Blocks 30% of all fatal blows or your money back."
>30% of the time, it works every time!
Crib from informercials. Give them mannerisms and accents, and ramp up the hard-sell.
BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!
Prices are cheap, too cheap for the effects. Things work, sometimes. Or briefly.
After a while his shit actually starts to work. Then later on he comes running to the players, out of breath, and constantly looking around him. Turns out he bargained with hags to get his hands on actual magical trinkets, and now they're after him.
in my campaign, there are two such NPCs - one is an alchemist, and all his potions are half price, and actually do work - sometimes. depending on the potion rarity, it has a chance of malfunctioning - regular healing potions malfunction 30% of the time, greater healing potions 60% of the time, most buffs like resistance or heroism have a 40% chance of mishap. mishap is usually a random magical effect, usually decided by rolling on the wild magic surge table. our fighter buys all his potions there, not because of the lower price, but because they are simply fun to use.
another character was a female street peddler of minor, shady artifacts, that we were supposed to take care of as she was selling her wares on "our turf" the campaign was about freeing a corrupted city from the evil regime which turned into us taking control instead, but the character was so fun and lovable naive, childish mannerism that doesn't seem to understand threats or sarcasm while lying through her teeth to peddle any old shit and get out of trouble that we kept her around and incorporated her into our own businesses just to get more opportunities to interact.
Then again, our group tries hard to have fun with RPing, so when I rolled a charlatan bard with a focus on deception after my old character was killed, our barbarian actually bought a useless tin ring from me for a hefty sum of gold because I persuaded him it's magical. Then I actually felt bad because I didn't expect him to seriously roll with the deal and made sure to focus on buffing him a lot to make up for it.