Is Haggle a binding contract?

Haggle:  If you take the time and use the talent or skill should you HAVE to buy the item?  

Scenario:
PC goes shopping for a Physician's Kit (Average availability, usually 50 silver) and finds one. Haggling ensues, and the merchant is highly successful, declaring that this physician's kit will cost 62.5 silver.

Does Haggling oblige you to buy the item? Does the PC have the option to say, "Yeah, that's beyond my price range. Thank you for your time," and walk away?

Is the situation different if someone else was doing the haggling for you? I ask my friend to haggle with the merchant, and they do so. They step back from the stall and report to me, "Yeah, it's gonna cost you 62 silver and 5 copper." Have they locked me into paying that, or can I say, "Wow, um... okay, maybe I won't buy anything today and see if I can get a better price next week."

Please vote in the above poll, but don't let that stop you from discussing it! I'd love to hear people's opinions and rationalisations.

Car Shopping: The sticker price is 29,000$. The car will be sold for much less than this. You talk to the salesman who IMMEDIATELY offers to take 2,000$ off that price before you've barely opened your mouth. You talk about financing. You suggest maybe a cheaper car and he talks the price down to 24,000$. You don't have 24,000$. You suck at haggling so you walk away, and the car stays unsold. You have haggled poorly. Haggle doesn't create a binding contract, it's the negotiation on the price, and it's a buyer's market on common goods. What you CANNOT do is find another set of goods of the same type during this game.

This is why merchants have a hard cap on what they will sell items for! (50%)

Scenario two:
Hey, I got a great deal on a new car! I haggled them down $2000! I got the undercoating for half price! And get this, they threw in custom floor mats for free!  Of course the financing is a little bit higher than I would have liked to see, but overall I feel so chuffed!

Earthdawn does not have buyers remorse laws, so unlike in our scenario the mans wife will not be frog-marching him into the managers office and loudly informing him that this man did NOT just by that car.

The Haggle talent has other uses, but when you have been informed of the effective base price for the item in that location and time, if you decide to attempt to haggle off of that price, you and the Merchant are attempting to agree upon a fair price. If a merchant is overcoming your Social Defense, he is convincing you that the price is fair.

If PCs get to walk away from a haggle that goes against them, then Merchants also ought to get to walk away from a haggle that goes against them.

My honest vote at this point would be Remove Haggle altogether because without balance it doesn't make sense to me.  (replace it with something comparable in skills and talents. or something fitting for the discipline).

I right this sadly because I wanted to make my eventual Troubadour with the goal of being a great merchant with the Haggle skill as his main focus.

let's simplify the argument a bit

let's limit the percentages from a max of 50% to 25% It's a reasonable range to work with. It puts it well in the range of the merchant will make money no matter the price. no merchant is going to try and sell an item for a price that no shopper will buy. Nor will merchant isn't going to buy something that leaves him very little profit margin.

It's still not a binding contract. Bartering or haggling is also a custom a regional custom. some societies everything is haggled as soon as you try and purchase something the merchant will begin to haggle if you want to or not. You could say some city's bartering is never used on either side prices is a price.


Its small towns this is the price period. In barter town or travar for common items nothings going to be above the market price where a competitor is going to sell it for less.


if you wanted to get complicated the bigger the city the lower the purchase price max particularly if someone could just go for another merchant if one was asking for something obscene for a common material but the same could be said about selling something that is readily available everywhere. rarer items wider range and higher the price.

if the price isn't what the buyer/seller wants they can always wait a week (30s) and hope for a better price. but 30s is a lot of coin and for most items isn't going to make it a better deal next week.

Chris, what you're describing in that scenario is whether or not the buyer is happy with their purchase. I want to take it back a step - do they have to *make* that purchase?

Let me phrase it another way. I walk into a used car dealership, and say, "That $10,000 car looks like just what I need. I'll give you $6,000 for it." That is my haggle roll. Have I now committed myself to buying a car, whatever the final price turns out to be?

Ork Miner: Mines 2000# of iron ore. This takes him 10 days of work, over two weeks. He pays 10sp a day for his food, and 2sp a day for his lodgings.

12 x 14 = 168sp over the course of two weeks (makes your downtime costs seem trivial, don't it?)

He MUST MAKE 168sp or starve. 2000# of iron ore becomes 1000# of iron.
A dagger is 1# for .8sp (.8/#)
A dwarf sword is 2# for 3sp (1.5/#)
A short sword is 3# for 16sp (5.33/#)
A broadsword is 4# for 25sp (6.25/#)

It seems perfectly reasonable for the value of the iron to be set at .5sp per #. This means that EVEN IF THE MINER CANNOT HAGGLE AT ALL he still makes a profit out of the deal.

The weaponsmith makes the deal with his miner contact for 10# of iron for 5sp; he turns this 10# of iron into a broadsword, short sword, dwarf sword, and dagger. He makes 44.8sp off this iron, or a total value of 896% of his investment. Honestly it looks like the weaponsmith is getting the short end of the deal here. He has to sell a shortsword a day to keep fed and make enough to manage his overhead. Economically speaking, if food is 5sp a meal, shortswords should be 60sp. Either that or only weaponsmiths forge weapons, because a non-adept can't compete at those prices. It's under Forge Weapon that the weaponsmith makes his real living.

DO NOT make the assumption that merchants are paying for materials from their suppliers what YOU a an adventurer are paying for yours.

In a medieval/fantasy economy it goes Serf -> Baker -> You. The serf and the baker arrange for how to have things transported, and someone might be making their 15sp a day off carting 400# of flour once a week, 400# of apples once a week, 400# of maneur once a week, two sheep once a week, and 400# of ore once a week. Or they might make this investment themselves.

In our economy in modern day it's more like Farmer -> Supplier -> Miller -> Supplier -> Factory -> Distributer -> Retail Outlet -> You or someone who makes something out of the bread and THEN you who pays 24x what that cost them to buy a sandwich.

The haggle roll is exactly what it is, a haggle roll. If you fail to haggle, you are not then held down by six trolls who chuff through your pockets. Haggling is a back and forth to set the final arrangement on the price. Prices within large cities are higher because so is the cost of living, but even THOSE guys are going to make more than 100% profit on the meekest of their sales.

We let players sell their alchemical wares at 50% value because they don't have a shop. You don't loot things in ED because there's no value in resale. You carry 200# of second hand swords into town and people ask you for your vending licenses and ask where you got the swords and hassle you, and if you talk your way out of that you sell them all for 5% of their sale value by trying to hawk them in a collapsible tent to whoever will stop by, or you start missing adventures as you set up the infrastructure to compete, and the next thing you know you're an NPC.

Even a 50% drop in the value is probably at least a 50% markup for the vendor, who just wants to move merchandise, make some money, and move more merchandise. After all, most people don't have the power to haggle like he does.

I was pointing out that haggle doesn't create a contract, because if it did, then the vendors who OPEN WITH HAGGLE have FORCED YOU to buy at whatever price they can set. That's not haggle, that's intimidation.

Not sure if anyone is an Anime fan but Ookami to Koushinryou (Spice and Wolf) is a spectacular look at economics although from the perspective of a town to town trader. It covers dozens of topics related to trade at a much hire detail than the game does but it does give a great perspective. They do have an episode that talks briefly about haggling with a merchant. It's a show that's about a peddler and a wolf deity that travel across Europe.
topics cover

• Currency exchange
  
• kingdoms changing currency value by lowering silver or other precious metal content
  
• haggling & haggling tricks
  
• taxes
  
• credit(and poison credit)
  
• trade houses(guild halls)
  
• commodities exchange(they have been around a long time)
  
• crashing the exchanges(trading places)
  
• diffrence between a peddler & a merchant who has his own perm shop. A peddler can leave to another city. A shopkeeper needs to keep good relations with all the other shops and communities.
  
• Church and their involvement with city/state affairs
  

honestly, there are a dozen more topics that are covered here an ironic thing for earthdawn is the trip starts somewhere near where travar is and goes NE till it gets into Eastern European/Russia area. There are countries but mostly walled city-states.

I know it sounds boring but honestly, its one of my favorite series it's not combat heavy & could easily be an economic's classes homework (seriously)

its likely regional locked but
https://vrv.co/series/G69PJE18Y/Spice-and-Wolf should be available US

this should be region free and it is about haggling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqTo50VMMDM

Golly, I seem to have really touched off a bit of a firestorm with my comment during that game yesterday. It seems like some people care about this a lot more than I do. Just to be clear, I am not really adamant in my position. I am merely stating my understanding, and freely admit I could be wrong in my facts or my understanding.

That having been said...

Shaalwyd wrote:

Chris, what you're describing in that scenario is whether or not the buyer is happy with their purchase. I want to take it back a step - do they have to *make* that purchase?

Let me phrase it another way. I walk into a used car dealership, and say, "That $10,000 car looks like just what I need. I'll give you $6,000 for it." That is my haggle roll. Have I now committed myself to buying a car, whatever the final price turns out to be?

Except your example is flawed right from the start. Because you are saying "that $10,000 car", because you assume you know the fair value of that car. When you walk into a used car lot, every car has two facts clearly displayed, the year the car was manufactured (giving it's age), and the asking price. Your goal is to find the car that is the greatest value within your price range. The 30 year old car for $900 might not be the greatest value because you anticipate it will need frequent repairs. The one year old $30,000 car might be out of your price range. Your hope is to find a good value and not a lemon. But even then you have two starting places for your haggle. The age of the vehicle, and the asking price.

Now instead imagine your character standing next to a corral of horses. Most of them are riding horses, but there might be draft horses and ponies mixed in also. Heck, maybe even a Warhorse or two. Not a single one of them has a tag on it giving it's age nor asking price. You are looking for a riding horse, and your job is to find the best value.

Now Earthdawn uses a simplified system where they tell you the value of an average horse in average market conditions. One with adequate training and not so old that it will be dying of old age within the next year or two. The book does not bother with the reality that some horses will be faster than others, some will be able to carry more weight. Etc.

The game system is simplified such that all riding horses have the same speed and carrying capacity until they reach age 25 when they suddenly die. This is not meant to be realistic, it is meant to be simple. And in such a simplified system, there is very little reason to haggle other than Role-playing. You can't get a better horse by haggling. You can't get a worse horse by haggling (unless the GM is being a dick). So there is little reason to haggle over anything except price, since all horses are interchangeable and there are not good or bad horses to be had. And little reason to haggle over price since there is a price list published that shows everything's fair and average value. Therefore there is little to haggle about other than for roleplaying purposes. People haggled back then.

In a real world situation, you would be haggling to find the fastest / strongest / youngest adult / best trained horse you could at the best price. You would not just be going for the cheapest horse, you would be going for the best value. The best value horse would almost certainly not be the cheapest horse. The cheapest horse is soon for the knackers yard.  So you would be happy to buy a horse at greater than "average price" because you got a horse of greater than average value (it's faster or stronger). Or at least the dealer has convinced you that you have obtained a horse of greater than average value for a price that is greater than average.

But in the simplified system, all horses are interchangeable, so the best horse is the cheapest horse. The player (not the character, the player) knows he did not get a horse of greater than average value, so there is no reason for a player to ever want to pay more than average price.

Most of the reasons I have seen for somebody walking away from deal after haggling it is because the player knows that the character did not get a good deal. Because in the simple model the game uses, all horses are interchangeable and there are none that are better than others. The player knows all horses are equal.
In my opinion, a higher standard of roleplaying would be that the character believes he has picked the best value out of all those presented to him. He has found the value best horse, and he is happy with it.

Same argument goes for all other goods. Remember that physician kit refills are not identical packages all produced by the same corporation. These are individually handcrafted goods, and one herbalists wares would look very different from another. As a player you know that they all (probably) have identical stat's. In real life, some would be better than others, and it would be good roleplaying for the character to act as if the believed some goods to be better than others, and to be willing to pay more for the very best, and to avoid what they fear to be inferior workmanship.

So once again.

• See what is available. See what the market price is.
  
• If you don't want to haggle, don't haggle.
  
• If you do want to haggle, trust your character to find what they consider the best value available to them. This might be something that is above the market price, but it is something that they perceive to be better than the other options. The player may know that the item they chose to settle upon has the exact same stats than the other ones presented, but the character does not, because in the more complex world that they inhabit (as opposed to the simplified word we are gaming in), some items are better than other.

GMPurplefixer wrote:

Ork Miner: Mines 2000# of iron ore.

One of the developers, I think it was Maximus, has said several times in the FASA forums that looking for economic consistency in Earthdawn is a fools quest. It is not there. In writing your post you have probably already given a lot more thought to the topic than any of the developers.

That having been said, your numbers seem way skewed to me. You have your Ork miner eating more than 3 good meals a day, and staying somewhere that costs twice as much as a private room in a cheap in. So your Ork miner is not going to be in danger of starving until he can't pay 1/12 of that for three simple meals and a flop house.

Further, your weaponsmith example ignored fuel, and, well ... everything except the price of pig iron. I would except the cost of pig iron to be only a minor component of the finished price of a steel weapon.  

Still, your basic point about merchants and middlemen is well taken.

GMPurplefixer wrote:

I was pointing out that haggle doesn't create a contract, because if it did, then the vendors who OPEN WITH HAGGLE have FORCED YOU to buy at whatever price they can set. That's not haggle, that's intimidation.

I should point out once again that the House Rules as Written do not allow a merchant to start haggling.

Haggle house rule wrote:

A character with ranks in Haggle can also used it for the more traditional purpose of haggling over price. Merchants have a standard Haggle step of 9, and a Social Defense of 10. They have two ranks of Haggle, and will therefore make two rolls against PCs who haggle with them;

As written, merchants will only haggle with characters who start haggling with them. Further, you can interact with merchants all you want. Ask questions, etc. In my vision, it is only when YOU start dickering over a price that you are making offers and counter-offers to buy.

I also want to point out that the RaW is that each haggle test (no matter how many successes) can move the price 5%. The House RaW has each success moving the price 5%. Is there a reason that change was made?

But once again, I think the real difference here is a difference of opinion of what a haggle roll means.

• One option is that it is a contest to see if a PC can fast-talk a merchant into selling an item for less than he can probably get from somebody else some other day, where both the PC and the merchant have a perfect knowledge of the market prices and the condition of the item.
  
• The other option is that it is a contest to see who can cause the other to agree that it is to their advantage to buy or sell an item at a particular price. And if somebody has overcome your characters Social Defense and convinced him that an item that he was interested in buying is a good value at a certain price, is it OK for the player to step in and use out of game knowledge to override the characters opinion.

I take your point about the variability of goods and the lack of price tags, and I agree that it's a good roleplaying choice to individualise your purchases, especially if you think you got a really good deal or a really high quality thing. However, you seem to have spectacularly missed my point, Chris. Let me rephrase.

I walk into a car dealership and point at a car. "I will give you $6,000 for this car!" I declare. Unbeknownst to me, the no-haggle price for this car is $10,000. I have therefore just haggled. Am I now committed to buying the car, irrespective of what price I can talk the merchant down to? If I cannot budge the merchant at all, and he says, "Nope, price is ten grand, take it or leave it," do I have the option to leave it?

I would argue that yes, I do. Even if it's a fantastic car - even if it's the best car I've ever seen, a fully restored classic that I personally think is worth a hundred grand and the merchant is crazy to let go for only TEN - I am allowed to walk away. I did not plan to spend that much on a car. My budget does not allow for that much, even for the best car on the face of the planet. EVEN IF the merchant convinced me that it's a good deal, it does not oblige me to MAKE that deal.

And I still maintain that the roll reflects the price the merchant is willing to sell the item at. This may or may not reflect my or their opinion of how awesome the item is. Those are individual details of the roleplay that may be a factor, but will not be a factor in all circumstances. (For example, the price is high right now because it's the last one in stock, or the price is low right now because I have a ton of these I'm trying to shift.)

Quote :

I also want to point out that the RaW is that each haggle test (no matter how many successes) can move the price 5%. The House RaW has each success moving the price 5%. Is there a reason that change was made?

I honestly had not interpreted the RAW that way. However, looking at it: it does say, "If successful, the price rises or falls by 5 percent of the goods’ cost in favor of the adept." Full stop, not 'per success'.

I do think I see your point, but disagree that the situation would ever be "Unbeknownst to me, the no-haggle price for this car is $10,000." That is something the player knows, even though the character does not.

So lets roleplay somebody roleplaying buying a car.
Player: My PC wants a used car.
GM: What price range did you have in mind?
Player: Around $6,000.
GM: OK, you go to a used car dealer and find several cars around 7 to 9 years old that you think the fair value is about that much. The sticker prices on all of them are higher, but you think you can get the dealer down to around $6000.
Player: Any yellow convertibles?
(skip a bit)
GM: OK, you are thinking about making an offer upon an 8 year old blue convertible with a sticker price of $10,000 but you are certain that the dealer will let it go for around $6500. That is a bit more than you were looking for, but seems like the best convertible on this lot. Would you like to just walk away and look for a different car? Or would you like to just buy it at $6500 and we will say you haggled him down to that? Or would you actually like to roll haggle recognizing that the final price might be ether below $6500 or above it?

So in that scenario, you (the player) know that the base price from which haggle is going to be varying is $6500. The character suspects this, but does not know it for a fact, and during the haggle can only express this belief as an opinion, not a fact. The player, knowing the base price from which haggling is going to start, has the opportunity to walk away. They also have to opportunity to buy it at that price without haggling. If the player, being aware of these facts and having had these opportunities chooses to haggle, I think you ought to let the dice fall where they may. Maybe the character gets totally out-haggled, ends up paying almost full sticker price plus a lousy financing deal. But she thinks that blue convertible is worth every penny she paid, and more. The time to walk away from a haggle is after you receive all the facts and before you roll the dice. Once you roll the dice you are swept up in the moment and make the purchase your character desires.

Quote :

And I still maintain that the roll reflects the price the merchant is willing to sell the item at.

I think it also reflects the price at which the character is willing to buy the item at. Otherwise why are you rolling against the merchants SD and he is rolling against yours if it only reflects the merchants attitudes and not your characters?

Once again, this is such a tiny matter and I don't care overwelmingly. I am willing to debate the matter as long as anybody is willing to debate it, but I think that most of the salient points have been made and understood.

Merchants can and do start haggling with passer-bys all the time hey warrior "want to buy this sword its the best you have ever seen." Many this is how they get most of their customers.

yet still, if they get everything they want out of the deal people can' still walk away. In big cities, they may be dozens or tens of dozens selling what you want. the game doesn't take into account you can visit each one then go back to the first and say I will buy it, or change your mind and buy nothing at all as you find buying a round of ale with that silver is still better than buying whatever it was. The PC's can be a total dick to any merchant if they wanted and waste their time (it might mess up future transactions as a negative interaction penalty.

also when I am buying a car 90% of the time I am going to be hitting more than one dealer so if I neg. a price with one I may offer to come back and never do because I found a better deal.


**Thankfully in US haggling in car's is disappearing I honestly hate the idea of it. (outside of trade-ins)


this is getting a bit out of hand, We also need to remind our selves that this is for fun and we aren't going to dick a player just because of a bad roll. This is for FUN. 60% of us

80% of us agree that common items you can walk away with no issue
60% agree you can walk away from anything
20% think its binding unless you don't have the coin
20% think its always binding even if you don't have the coin are you forced to sell something to cover the cost???

thats a major majority on regular purchases
and almost 2/3rds' never binding its in the PC's favor majority wise can we move on now?

Only 5 people have voted. I would prefer to have a larger group before closing the issue since this is an organization of players.

Here is an good discussion on some of the finer points.
http://fasagames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=220

If you have nothing new to add to the discussion, by all means move on from it. I've set the poll for 10 days initially, and I plan to give it at least that long.

However, re-reading the rules I do believe Chris is correct that any given Haggle roll can only move the price by 5%, regardless of the number of successes. (Similar to Threadweaving in that extra successes do nothing for you.) This was not an intentional change from RAW, so unless anyone wants to argue for keeping extra successes a thing we'll fix that in our house rules.

This does make Haggle less valuable, unfortunately, as it allows the possibility of a 5% discount per rank at maximum. As always, anyone who has ranks in the thing affected can respec that part of their character build if the change makes the ability uninteresting to them.

so do we count the extra successes as a contest? I got 3 you got 2 extra so I win this 5%? It would give the extra's a meaning other than throw them away. I think 5% per win is fine.