Alternate Profession Rules

While the basic rules for the Profession skill are perfectly suitable for the needs of most campaigns, there is little opportunity to make them a meaningful part of play. Those rules assume that the character is spending a full week conducting business (when it is often more desirable for a PC to merely do a single day’s work), and they offer few ideas on how to modify the basic check to account for circumstances, roleplaying opportunities, and so forth. For example, there are two primary methods of plying a trade while practicing various professions. One is by setting up a place of business in a static location, and the other is by traveling from point to point, offering services. Both of these approaches are possible within a single area of expertise in almost every case, though there are advantages and disadvantages inherent in each. The Profession rules as written do not take any of this into account.

Of course, you can choose to fully roleplay the establishment and development of a business, making appropriate Profession checks along the way while incorporating most of the decision making and operations of the business into the PC’s story. Alternatively, if you don’t wish to delve into the complexities of creating a business and handling the bookkeeping to run it, then assume you find enough opportunities to convince the occasional passerby to buy a good or service from you to make a small profit. You earn your check result in silver pieces per day in this fashion. However, if you want a system that’s relatively easy to manage but that offers more choices and options for using the Profession skill, the following system provides rules that are a little more flavorful and involved.