Who Does it Better? Skill Focus: Haggle

Yeah, it's like that.

A while ago a reader commented on "Haggle, is it worth it?" and stated that he thought the artificer might be better suited to a haggle build. I decided to take a look at the three classes which use Haggle and see which one could get the highest.

The three classes which have Haggle as a class skill are the Artificer, Bard, and Rogue. Assuming each one is trying to excel at Haggle they’d all want a Charisma of at least 18.

Here the Bard has an advantage. Charisma is the key ability for his spellcasting. However, that is the only advantage as even though Charisma enhances Use Magic Device, that is also a skill shared by all three classes. With a high enough Use Magic Device and some willingess to utilize items spellcasting doesn’t bear as much weight in this argument.

So let’s assume each of our prospective haggle masters has a Charisma of 18, takes maximum ranks in the skill at every level and has taken the feats Skill Focus: Haggle and Negotiator.

So, at first level, without enhancements they should all have a Haggle of +13. Now let’s take a look at how they can increase their haggle even more by level 20.

Artificer:
First off let’s start by taking all the Improved Haggle enhancements for a bonus of +4. Next we’re going to take all of the Artificer Skill Boost enhancements, which will give a +5 bonus to the skill for 20 seconds, certainly long enough to click the sell button. The Artificer also gets access to the Eagle’s Splendor spell, so he can easily give himself a +4 to charisma, which corresponds to a +2 bonus to the check. In addition he will raise his charisma every 4 levels which will give him and additional +2 to the check. If we tally these up the Artificer will have a haggle of 41 (5 from feats, 23 from ranks, 4 from passive enhancements, 5 from active enhancements, and 4 from Charisma) at level 20.

That is without items which can be used universally by any of the classes and so won’t be analyzed here.

Bard:
Now we take a look at the Bard. Like the artificer before him, and the rogue to follow we will start by taking all the Improved Haggle enhancements for a bonus of +4. Also, similar to the others he will raise his Charisma every four levels but unlike the other two he will continue this at level 20. But he, unlike the other two, can raise his Charisma three times through enhancements, in addition his capstone enhancement raises Charisma by an additional two for a +1 to the check. Combine all of this into a higher Charisma gives him a +3, adding on the spell Eagle’s Splendor that he can cast gives an additional +2 to the check. Speaking of spells, the bard also has access to the spell Focusing Chant, he also has access to Greater Heroism which grants an additional +4 to the check. Adding all this together gets us a Haggle bonus of 47 (5 from feats, 23 from ranks, 4 from passive enhancements, 5 from spells, 10 from Charisma).

Rogue:
Finally we’re going to take a look at the rogue. Right off the bat he gets +4 from Improved Haggle, he like the artificer can get a skill boost so there is +5. He raises his charisma at each chance and uses Eagle’s Splendor for a total of +4. All told we get the same here as we did for the Artificer above.

Conclusion:

So, with the breakdown complete, the Bard is still victorious at Haggle. Even if I add in the ability for Rogues and Artificers to use Greater Heroism items, the Bard still has two points on them. It is a close match, so the question you have to ask yourself is--is two points in Haggle enough to suffer through 20 levels of Bard?

Haggle, is it worth it?

Sorry for the late posting, got kind of busy last weekend. I'll be starting a new series today, Skill Focus. Skill Focus articles are going to be all about the skills in DDO, are they worth taking, tips on use, etc. Today we take a look at the haggle skill to determine whether it is actually worth taking.

I have a lot of players in my guild who make combat machines, uber powerful wizards, raging barbarians...and they all look down on one poor lonely drow, my haggle bard. Well, today I'm going to put forward the case for that bard, and all other haggle builds out there by breaking down whether the skill is worth taking.

To do that we are going to take a look at two characters, let's say rogues of tenth level. Both have 14 Cha, but one has taken the time to enhance their haggle a little bit by raising its ranks, picking up an item, etc. They are both going to sell items worth 2000, 4000, 6000, 8000, 10000, and 20000 platinum pieces (pp) each. Author's Note: I'm not exactly sure there are items at all those levels of worth, but for the sake of argument let's let it pass. They are going to sell them to the same vendor, and at the end we will tally up the difference in platinum to see how much of a difference the Haggle skill makes. We'll also see by what amount the haggle build comes out on top in regards to purchasing power.

Our first rogue, the one without haggle, has a simple +2 to the skill because of his charisma.

Our second rogue has a +2 Cha bonus, +13 skill ranks, a +3 item (relatively easy to acquire), a +2 from a casting of Eagle's splendor, a +2 from enhancements, and a +3 from the Skill Focus feat...for a total of 25 to haggle.

According to DDO Wiki, Haggle uses the following formulas:

Selling Profit: [Base Sell Percentage (we're going to use 10%, the same as a normal vendor)+(.0025*Haggle)]*Item Base Value

Purchasing Cost = {[1-(0.005*Haggle)]* Markup (we're going to use 25%, the same as a normal vendor)}*Item Base Value

Let us begin:

The rogue without haggle sells his items to the vendor and receives 210, 420, 630, 840, 1050, and 2100 platinum pieces respectively, for a total of 5250 platinum.

The Haggle build goes in and sells them for 325pp, 650pp, 975pp, 1300pp, 1625pp, and 3250pp for a total of 8125pp platinum.

That's a difference of 2875 platinum.

How about buying power?

The rogue without haggle purchases those items for 2475pp, 4950pp, 7425pp, 9900pp, 12375pp, and 24750pp...a total of 61885 platinum, a pretty hefty sum.

The rogue with haggle buys his items for 2437pp and 5 gp, 4875pp, 7312pp and 5gp, 9750pp, 12187pp and 5gp, and finally 24375pp for a total of 53625pp and 5gp.

The difference here is 8259pp and 5gp.

So at the end of the day the haggle build has 11134pp and 5gp more than the non haggle counterpart. That's being generous by the way, because at that level the haggle rogue could have a better magic item, and used a rogue skill boost among other things to get even more out of the haggle skill...but we'll discuss that at a later time.

In short people, I think haggle is worth it, it saves you money. I showed you the difference after selling only six items, you can find that many or more in a single adventure...think about that. Haggle adds up fast, especially at higher levels.

So, is haggle worth it? Yes, most assuredly.