I know it’s bad but it’s happend to me before I was carrying some gold and then the greens intercepted me and I felt the urge so bad to kill their merchant or janitor so I changed my class to footman pulled out a musket and shot a merchant in the head
You can actually grind merchant like civilian. To get level 100 on merchant, I purchased two shops as civilian, upgraded them to level 5, and switched over to merchant. Make sure you have accountant skill as merchant, because otherwise there is no XP.
