Important Businessman (3.5e Prestige Class)

Important Businessman

Many heroes accumulate vast sums of wealth, but some heroes hunger for even more than that. Good Important Businessmen are generous, giving philanthropists, while evil Important Businessmen are wicked misers who exploit those less fortunate than themselves.

Note: While this could be taken as a sort of "joke class," it is very easily fit into most campaign settings, and the class mechanics are actually rather unique. I suggest that you take the 'class' flavor with a grain of salt, and give it a shot regardless.

Prerequisites

Skills: Appraise 10 ranks, Profession: Businessman 10 ranks.

Special: Must own 10,000 gp worth of material belongings in a bank AND must have a reputation score higher than 5. (If reputation rules are not in use, this reputation requirement is waived)

Table: The Important Businessman

Hit Die: d6

Level	Base Attack Bonus	Fort Save	Ref Save	Will Save	Special
1st	+0	+0	+0	+2	Suit and Tie, Net Worth
2nd	+1	+0	+0	+3	Stock Maturation, Power Nap
3rd	+2	+1	+1	+3	Hostile Takeover
4th	+3	+1	+1	+4	Stock Maturation
5th	+3	+1	+1	+4	Leadership, Very Thin Watch
6th	+4	+2	+2	+5	Stock Maturation
7th	+5	+2	+2	+5	Crush the Poor/Remember Your Roots
8th	+6/+1	+2	+2	+6	Stock Maturation
9th	+6/+1	+3	+3	+6
10th	+7/+2	+3	+3	+7	Stock Maturation, Fiscal Paragon
Class Skills (4 + Int modifier per level) Appraise, Diplomacy, Bluff, Profession, Knowledge: Nobility, Gather Information, Speak Language

Class Features

All the following are class features of the Important Businessman:

Net Worth: Important Businessmen find cash-on-hand to be a cumbersome and inefficient use of money. Instead of carrying it around, they invest it in a diversified number of stocks, bonds, and starting businesses. By taking an hour to find places to invest in while in an urban area, they may transfer any amount of money to or from their Net Worth. Many Important Businessman abilities are calculated by Net Worth.

Suit and Tie: For every 12,000 gp of your Net Worth you invest in this, you gain a +1 modifier to any charisma-based skill, as well as profession (businessman/merchant) and your Appraise checks. You cannot wear any thing else in these appropriate slots, or wear anything that conceals them, such as a cloak or Jacket. This will cause the benefits to be lost. If the tie is partially covered by anything that is not a part of the suit, than you will lose a portion of the modifier equal to what part of the tie is covered. Formal vests don't count as damaging the bonus, but they must match the suit and tie. Every time the tie is changed in Networth, it's color and design must be specified,as is the suit. Color coordination is to be determined by the person with the best fashion sense in the party (which is rarely the DM, but has been known to be on rare occasions,) or the person with a girlfirend to consult. If no one has a girlfriend, than you go to whoever is considered most fashionable (the major test is the ability to tell and explain the difference between fuschia and hot pink.)

Stock Maturation: Important Businessmen are shrewd and calculating investors. At every even-numbered level, an Important Businessman's Net Worth goes up by 1d10+10%. This is the first thing that happens each level, as soon as the choice to take a level in Important Businessman is made, breaking the usual order of progression.

Power Nap: By level 2, Important Businessmen have no time to sleep. Once per week they may sleep for 15 minutes, and receive the benefits of a full 8 hours of bed rest.

Leadership: At 5th level, the Important Businessman gains the service of a group of several loyal subordinates. If he already has the Leadership feat, he gains a +2 bonus to his leadership score.

Very Thin Watch: For every 8,000 gp you put in from your net worth, you gain a special modifier of +1 to any intelligence based ability score, as well as diplomacy. This item counts a magical bracelet. Removing it will lsoe the benefits. If stolen, the benefits are lost, but can only be granted to anther person with the profession of Merchant or businessman. The watch can be concealed if you are using long sleeves. The affects are considered spell-like, and the item is consider permanently enchanted. Similar to the suit and tie, you may choose the materials used to constructed the watch, gemstones and metals. However, unlike the suit and tie, fashionable taste is not needed.If the important businessman is an important business woman, then diamonds are considered a plus. The total net worth must be over 50,000 gp to allow gemstones. Metals are taken into account for racial modifiers on charsima based skill checks. (Vampires and lycanthropes, for example, will consider silver to be in poor taste. Dwarves will find mithral or adamantine better than humans, who will prefer gold or platinum. The racial codes will be considered at the discretion of the DM.)

Hostile Takeover: While Important Businessmen are thinkers in their own rights, they know when to leap on somebody else's undeveloped good idea. At 6th level the Important Businessman may select either a first or second level ability from a base class.

Crush the Poor/Remember Your Roots/Economic incentive: Important Businessmen cannot help but have their wealth affect those around them. At 7th level, as a full round action, good-aligned Important Businessmen boost the armor classes of allies within 60 feet by 1 for each 10,000 gp of net worth higher than their allies, while evil-aligned Important Businessmen lower the armor class of opponents within 30 feet by 1 for each 10,000 gp of net worth higher than their foes. A neutral Important Businessman may choose to use either Crush the Poor or Remember Your Roots, although using either is a evil or good act respectively.

A Neutral-aligned businessman may use his net worth to make strategic investments. For every 10,000 gp he's willing to sacrifice from his net worth, he may increase the rank of a craft (production), profession (labor), perform (patron of the arts) or knowledge (consulting fee) check. This accrual may last one month per level of Important businessman. The benefits of this technique may stack. This act is neutral alignment, unless it has sever consequences, in which case it may effect alignment based on the consequences and intent. (For example, raising an evangelist of Pelor's perform Oratory skill by twenty or more in order to accrue more followers simply because of one's belief in Pelor would be good. Doing the same for a speaker of Vecna simply to further the cause of evil is evil.) Any act done in exchange for profits or personal gain is deemed neutral, unless altruism is more involved than profit, or the consequences of the act involve truly heinous acts such as the slaughtering of innocents or something like it.

Fiscal Paragon: At 10th level, an Important Businessman becomes a magical creature. He is forever more treated as an outsider rather than as a humanoid (or whatever the Important Businessman’s creature type was) for the purpose of spells and magical effects. Additionally, the Important Businessman gains damage reduction 10/magic, which allows him to ignore the first 10 points of damage from any attack made by a nonmagical weapon or by any natural attack made by a creature that doesn’t have similar damage reduction. Unlike other outsiders, the Important Businessman can still be brought back from the dead as if he were a member of his previous creature type.

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