Traveling Merchants as map encounters

[edge2054]

Basic idea is that the player could rarely find these in the west as map actors like patrols or adventuring parties. Basically traveling merchants that pop up an encounter map and have one or more shops you can buy from. The number of possible merchants should be preset at birth to prevent merchant scumming and possibly quite low (2 to 4 maybe). Shop inventory should spawn when the map does so that they remain interesting all game rather then just early game.

Shaloran Scribes - Sell Runes and Tailored clothing.

Dwarven Caravan - Multiple merchants. Axe, heavy armor, rune, and sword merchants.

Cornac Mining Supplier - Sells tools and lites.

[lukep]

I wouldn't mind if there was an unlimited amount of merchants available. It would make it so that you wouldn't need to actively avoid them when unprepared, and Adventurer parties add risk to scumming for worldmap encounters. Other ideas:

Thaloren rangers: bows, slings, and infusions
Cornac traveller: lost merchant style goods (random higher quality)

The stores could also be more highly specialized, like a Shaman, that sells only nature infused items, a journeyman who sells mastery powered ones, or an enchanter that sells arcane items.