Shopkeeper

You ran a small shop, market stall, or similar business, buying from suppliers and selling on to others. You navigate markets and interactions, working to bring people closer together with what they need, or at least what they want.

Why did you step out from behind the shop counter? Is the business still going? Who tends to it while you’re away?

Ability Score Increases: +1 to Charisma and one other ability score.

Skill Proficiencies: Insight and one other of your choice

Tool Proficiencies: One of your choice

Suggested Equipment (Cost 9 gold): common clothes, abacus, merchant’s scale, common clothes.

Feature: Let's Make a Deal. You gain an expertise die on ability checks made to barter, sell, or trade for goods.

Adventures and Advancement. Once you have found a way to effectively ply your trade while being an adventurer and gained a degree of prestige, you can choose to join a guild or do your own business. If you join a guild, you gain the Guild Business feature from the Guildmember background. If you continue on your own, you have an ongoing business that provides you with a poor or modest lifestyle, depending on how good business is. At the Narrator’s discretion, this business may eventually take the form of a shop-type Freelinking: Node title stronghold does not exist .

Connection and Memento. Roll 1d10, choose, or make up your own.

Shopkeeper Connections

1. Your best customer who you always looked forward to seeing.
2. One of your longest-standing workers.
3. The neighbor of your shop or stall in the market.
4. One of your suppliers who always treated you especially well.
5. A guild master who denied your application to join.
6. A local politician who you traded favors with under the table.
7. A particularly adroit rumormonger, always eager for gossip.
8. The mentor you took over the shop from.
9. The local eccentric you relied on for appraising odd finds.
10. The disreputable landlord who evicted you on false pretenses.

Shopkeeper Mementos

1. A small dog you used to guard your stand with its strident barking.
2. The piece of cheap jewelry you accepted in lieu of payment from the parent of a sick child.
3. A journal recording all the best finds that passed through your shop.
4. A reference book for the product your business specialized in.
5. A pipe that you would appreciate during long days.
6. An intricate puzzle box you would hold precious finds in.
7. A false purse filled with caltrops, to ward off pickpockets.
8. A set of fine cloth gloves for handling delicate materials.
9. The first coin you earned in your business.
10. An antique that you paid a pretty penny for, but cannot recall why.