Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

I've heard appraise goes a bit weird with merchants if it gets raised too high. I was looking to max this skill ... will that be a waste? What are people's thoughts on this skill in general? I don't see too many people RPing appraise with trading, you can't use it at Mudd's and apparently if you have too much it can actually lose you money at the vendors! Is this skill worth bothering with?

Hammer_Song wrote:I've heard appraise goes a bit weird with merchants if it gets raised too high....apparently if you have too much it can actually lose you money at the vendors! Is this skill worth bothering with?

Where did you hear this? There is a known issue that if you go over 100 pts in some skills, the Engine starts to interpret your total from 0, so that 105 pts is interpreted at 5 pts. Supposedly.

Besides mechanics, wouldn't Appraise be an actual Skill gained and utilized by those Characters that consider themselves merchants? As we all know, DMs are the only ones able to require a Skill role for Role-play in general, however, we Players are expected to RP our Character Sheets—thus a Character Sheet without Appraise investment upon it, would mean a Character unable to define or attribute correct value to tradable goods.

That said, it would be nice if there were more setups where Characters were requested to apply those Appraise Skill points. But that can be said about any of the Skills.

Steve wrote:Besides mechanics, wouldn't Appraise be an actual Skill gained and utilized by those Characters that consider themselves merchants? As we all know, DMs are the only ones able to require a Skill role for Role-play in general, however, we Players are expected to RP our Character Sheets—thus a Character Sheet without Appraise investment upon it, would mean a Character unable to define or attribute correct value to tradable goods.

You are aware that shop prices are influenced by appraise, right? Higher skill in appraise means higher selling, lower buying. Works on all shops.

So I'm guessing that is OP's concern, that it'll work counter productive

When I had a toon with high appraise I noticed no issues however, so I'm not sure what amount of skill you're aiming at.

As pointed out above, if you get your appraise up around or above 100, you risk only being counted as having 5 appraise. Which will be counterproductive to say the least!

This is rarely an issue, as few people that I'm aware of ever get their skills that high (save for Spot or Hide/Move Silently perhaps). For Appraise, I wouldn't recommend raising it above 60, unless it's for RP reasons.

40 - 50 is probably quite sufficient as well, to maximize your benefit from the skill.


If you want to know some of the mechanics of the skill, you can see them here:
http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Appraise

I do believe there is a total cap on the percentage appraise can net you, though, +/- 30% including the d20 roll.

Appraise (secretly) rolled for merchants is your d20 + skill vs. merchant's d20 + skill (which is why prices vary between resets).

So theoretically if a merchant has 10 ranks in appraise and your character has 10 ranks, your percentage will vary between -19% and +19% base price trading (1+10 vs 20+10, or 20+10 vs 1+10).

So obviously the more ranks the better, but exactly how much you need for each merchant remains the constant unknown since they all have their own, and likely different, appraise scores.

[Edit] And yes, appraise stacks with Shadow Thief of Amn 10% merchant bonus

Tsidkenu wrote:So obviously the more ranks the better, but exactly how much you need for each merchant remains the constant unknown since they all have their own, and likely different, appraise scores.

There's a hardcap of 30 for NPCs, so the highest appraise you can expect them to have is 30

Considerate_ wrote:There's a hardcap of 30 for NPCs, so the highest appraise you can expect them to have is 30

I think that is a hardcap on the +/- percentage. So an NPC may still have 99 appraise score but the most a PC will cop will be 30% total penalty or bonus.

It's true that there's a hardcap on the percentage of the discount you can get, and that's 30% - but according to the Wiki I read it as a max of 30 or -30 to your score, depending on the NPC merchants Appraise skill:

The game checks the player's Appraise skill and the merchant's Appraise skill. The player Appraise skill is then subtracted from the merchant's Appraise skill. There is a hardcap of 30 or -30.

http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Appraise




Back on topic, I stumbled across this information from the Wikia that I wasn't aware of before:

Note that the hard-coded MarkUp/MarkDown function is bugged, resulting in WORSE "Sell to store" prices if the player's Appraise is too high (in general, once the player's Appraise skill reaches 25, she will get less money for items sold to most merchants). The greater the difference between Markup<->Markdown becomes the less money you get for selling items to store (buying items from stores is not affected by this bug).

This bug is only on the selling part, so if you got a high appraise (above 25 apparently), you risk getting less coin from merchants, than those who stay around 25.

It's still better, to have a higher appraise than 25 when it comes to buying items.

Considerate_ wrote: This bug is only on the selling part, so if you got a high appraise (above 25 apparently), you risk getting less coin from merchants, than those who stay around 25.

It's still better, to have a higher appraise than 25 when it comes to buying items.

Holy crap-o-la batman...that means all those Skill-minus-to-Appraise items I've found over the years HAD A VALUE?!?!?

Yup, the joke's on you Steve

There is no appraise bug, (I know for a fact), at least not before the 100 roll over bug al skill points have.

It is a great skill to have.

I know what the best max on this server is... ...but I'm not telling.