Shattering the Venturer

The venturer from the Player's Companion has that one signature ability which is so good that it's basically mandatory to have a venturer in the party: the ability to raise market class by one.  This works out to about 2.5 times as much stuff available to buy, or twice as many buyers for your treasure.

This is about the only thing venturer has going for it, and it's sort of a henchman-tier class other than that.  One solution I've tried is to put that market increasing ability on a fighter chassis, the varangian.  This worked OK.  It was still sort of a hench-tier class but it was a hench that you would take adventuring rather than just leaving in town, and if your PC died it was one that wouldn't be too bad to play.

Thinking further on it, I think I don't really like the market class increasing ability.  It's an interesting idea but it's too big a hammer.

In parallel, there are all these general proficiencies in ACKS that just don't get taken because they aren't any good.  They're the usual suspects: Craft, Profession, Art, Performance.  It's not surprising - why would you take Profession(Restauranteur) when you could take something that will keep you alive and help you reach name level?

I suspect you see where I'm going with this.  So, the half-baked proposal:

If you take a Day Job proficiency and spend a month gainfully employed in a particular market, in addition to earning the month's wages, you treat the market class as one better (to a minimum of class I) for the rest of the year, for items produced by / related to that proficiency, including selling related magic items.

Here's a table:

Proficiency	Monthly wage (gp)	Goods and services
Animal Husbandry	10	Draft and riding animals, livestock
Alchemy 2	50	Oil, healing herbs, alchemists
Alchemy 3	250	Potions
Animal Training	25	War and hunting dogs, hawks, warhorses, animal trainers
Art	10	Jewelry and other art objects
Craft Armorer	10	Armor, shields, and barding, armorers
Craft Bowyer	10	Bows and crossbows, armorers
Craft Jeweler	10	Gems and jewelry
Craft Leatherworker	10	Light armor, saddles, armorers
Craft Shipwright	10	Ships and mariners
Craft Weaponsmith	10	Non-bow weapons, armorers
Dwarven Brewing	25	Dwarven mercenaries, oil
Engineering	25	Engineers
Gambling	1d6	Ruffians (carousers, footpads, and thugs)
Healing	25	Healers
Labor	3d4	Carts, wagons, draft animals, non-dog livestock, and porters (L0 henchmen)
Manual of Arms 1	30	Light infantry and archers
Manual of Arms 1 + Riding	60	Light cavalry and horse archers
Manual of Arms 2	60	Heavy infantry and longbowmen
Manual of Arms 2 + Riding	120	Heavy cavalry and cataphracts
Performance	10	Ruffians (carousers and reciters), instruments
Profession Chamberlain or Steward	25	Ruffians (reciters and spies), quartermasters
Profession Lawyer	25	Ruffians (footpads and thugs), attorneys
Profession Merchant	25	Trade goods
Profession Restaurateur	25	Rations, livestock for eating, ruffians (carousers), quartermasters, monster parts?
Profession Scribe or Librarian	25	Scrolls, books, sages
Seafaring	6	Ships and mariners
Siege Engineering	25	Siege weapons, artillerists, siege engineers

Notable things that aren't on this table: spellcasting services.  Theology and Collegiate Wizardry aren't really jobs, but if you made them jobs then I could see adding this to them and then maybe people would take them (or you could use Last Rites).  I'm also not a huge fan of improving the availability of spellcasting, because my players already used to complaint that RL&L was too available.

Healing Herbs aren't more available if you work as a healer.  Healing is already a great proficiency and doesn't need the help, and it's too natural a synergy.  Alchemy 2 notes that you can work as an apothecary, which means you know where to get the raw materials, whereas the doctor isn't necessarily the guy doing the procurement.

In general I am leery of making it too easy to improve the availability of military oil and healing herbs - these are two of the items where the market rules matter between 2nd and 4th level, when you've upgraded out of your template gear to plate and a real weapon but you still want these "expensive" consumables for the dungeon (but before you start worrying about mercenaries and mounts and selling magic items).

One potential implication of this system that I'm not sure about is that hirelings / specialists have the relevant proficiencies, and do indeed work in the market.  So that could be sort of a backdoor to just increasing market class for everything by one.  A reasonable solution to this, though, might be that if they're working for you on retainer, you're their sole employer and they're not doing business on the side.  Another is that hirelings aren't as engaged with their employers' interests as henchmen ("damnit Jim, I'm a blacksmith, not some sort of wheeler-dealer"), so if you want to push them outside their expertise, you have to recruit them all the way, and if you want to burn a henchman slot on increasing market class for a particular good in a particular market, well alright, that sounds fair.  A third is to just let it roll, you want to spend some amount of money monthly to boost market class for certain items, OK, fine, that's gameplay and choices about resource allocation instead of having a one-stop venturer solution for all your market class needs.

And then ban venturer.  Eveybody can be a little bit venturer, but nobody has to be 100% venturer (or burn a henchman slot thereon).

(I guess the henchmen and hirelings thing does suggest another possibility - spend a henchman slot and some amount of money to cultivate a network in a particular market.  It's like having a venturer henchman, without having to have a venturer henchman)