Is there a console command to give money to any NPCs? Or any items for that matter?

yes. Open up the console, click on the NPC and type:

replacing "value" with the amount of gold.

For items, you need to find the item ID, which can be found in the CS, or on the UESP.

I wonder though, why would you want to give an NPC money?

I tried doing that to a merchant, but their gold value remained the same.

I wanted to sell a set of daedric armor to an merchant so she could wear it to see if a mod had worked correctly.

You could find an enchanter who will buy armor, make a few expensive enchanted items, and then the merchant should have enough gold to buy the armor.

Sounds like too much of a hassle. Any reason why this console command doesn't give gold to npcs for me? Also, when I type in a specific number of gold to give me, like player->additem gold_001 90000, it'll give me a random low number like 2400 or something. Is that normal?

To alter how much gold a Merchant can Barter with, you have to edit that in the Construction Set.
Barter amount is a variable in their AI Services listing, so cannot be altered in-game with the console.


Yes, there seems to be a limit to how much gold you can give yourself at once.
Try 5000, that smaller number should function correctly. And then you can repeat the command a few times until you have the amount you want.

I think that the limit for additem command is 65535.

Edit: yep, 65536 gives an error and gives 1 coin, and anything above counts again from 0, so 65538 gives 2 gold.

Ah, i see. I thought a mod may have altered this.