Artisans and businesses
One of the best ways to leverage one's skills to make money without the risk of adventuring is to be an artisan. This is not a path player characters usually go down, but it is not unheard of. NPCs can be very skilled in their craft without being powerful warriors.
Artisan skill
Trades are hard to master, and those at the top can earn orders of magnitude more gold than those just starting out.
| d20 | Rank | Max rarity | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-5 | Novice | Common | A novice still has a lot to learn |
| 6-11 | Apprentice | Uncommon | An apprentice knows their way around the shop |
| 12-16 | Journeyman | Rare | Journeymen have made some progress in their craft |
| 17-19 | Expert | Very Rare | An expert has honed their trade for a long time |
| 20 | Master | Legendary | A master has a lifetime of study behind them |
Some artisans only work on a subset of what is possible with their skills. For example, someone might be a master swordsmith, and only accept commissions for swords and other bladed weapons. Others might have several skills, for example a seasoned village blacksmith might be both a journeyman armorer and weaponsmith. Artisans with multiple specialties usually have less mastery than someone who fully focuses in a single field.
Business size
Businesses may look very different depending on size, while still doing essentially the same type of work. For example, both a goatherd (1 worker) and a large cattle ranch (~100 workers) are both in the Farming > Husbandry > Meat category.
| d20 | Business Size (workers) |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | Family (1-5) |
| 11-14 | Small (6-15) |
| 15-18 | Medium (16-50) |
| 19-21 | Large (51-250) |
| 22- | Industrial (251-) |
d20 + round(log10(population)) + skill modifier
For example, a settlement with between 500 and 5000 inhabitants would have a population bonus of +3. A business performing a skilled labor is usually smaller, giving them -5. This means only the very largest cities can support large and industrial sized artisan businesses.
Spellcasting services
Refer to the rules for how to acquire the services of a spellcaster. To randomly generate the highest level spell a NPC spell caster is capable of casting, use 16 (3d10l-1).