How much to "charge" PCs between adventures? (cost of living)

[Clavis]

I don't DM 4th Edition, but I have a "down-time" system that I use for Classic D&D and Castles & Crusades. When characters are in town, I ask the players to tell me how well their PCs are living. I expect them to live on a large scale, so if they want to be cheap they get to experience all the wonderful disease, filth, poverty and social injustice that made the real-life Middle Ages such a fun time to be alive.

If the players only want to spend a copper or less day I tell them their PCs are living like a beggars. They sleep in gutters, eat garbage, and have to make a Poison save each day or catch some kind of disease. They will probably be accused of some kind of crime, just because they look like they're guilty of something.

If they spend 1-2 silvers a day the PCs live like ordinary people. They eat cabbages, beans and gruel with some salt pork and brown bread; live in a crowded, dirty room infested with bedbugs, roaches, or rats; drink weak skunky beer; own one or two sets of clothing that they have to repair or make themselves; and perhaps they see an ugly, worn-out and/or diseased prostitute occasionally. The PCs have to save versus Poison each month or catch some kind of disease.

If they spend 1-5 gold pieces a day they live like the middle class. They eat meat daily (often muscle meat rather than organs); can eat white bread and vegetables; drink wine or good beer; live in a few clean rooms that actually have furniture in them; only see vermin rarely; have a maid; can buy new clothing; see plays and hear musical performances; and can see a relatively clean, average-looking prostitute regularly. They only save versus Poison once a year to see if they contract a disease.

If they spend more than 5 gold pieces a day they live like the upper class. They own many sets of fine clothing, eat the best foods, live in clean rooms in a good part of town, have servants, and patronize beautiful courtesans. They can expect to be invited to parties and other social gatherings, and will be expected to host gatherings as well. They don't have to worry about randomly catching diseases at all. If they are accused of a crime they can expect it to be hushed up (unless some greedy official wants to confiscate their property).

 

[catsclaw227]

Why not spend about 10min running a little downtime skill challenge? Set some parameters, use level appropriate DCs and come up with what success, partial success and failure might mean. Maybe setg some modifiers for "living like a king" and "living tight" that are added into their rolls. In any case, they can earn or overspend as how they roll. Maybe keep it around to use in the future.

 

[Skallgrim]

I'm thinking of having a chunk of time pass--a few months, maybe--between our current adventure, which is being DMed by another member of the group, and the next one, which I will be DMing. I was wondering if anyone has a system for what to "charge" PCs in terms of cost of living. I imagine a few different categories that I would ask the players to pick one from with honesty in the spirit of role-playing their character, from "living like a king" to "living frugally" to come up with a GP cost per day.

Any ideas?

As others have said, this 'cost of living' should also be balanced with a 'paying job' option. Heroes are few and far between, and often have many commercially viable skills and talents. I don't think it would be fair to deplete their expenses during their down time unless they could also make money, perhaps even more money, during their down time too.

Perhaps this (again, as suggested by others) might be handled as a roleplaying or skill challenge event. Some PCs might want to loaf around and waste their loot on ale and whores, while others might skimp and save. The guy with Brew Potion might actually make an honest living and a profit (presumably it is POSSIBLE to either make a potion at below cost or sell them at above cost), and the rogue might just take someone else's hard earned cash.

If you aren't going to do something fun and interesting with their down time (Roland took a job as a ratcatcher?!?) I would simply handwave it myself.

 

[Mercurius]

Thanks for the thoughtful responses. I will really have to tailor it to the individual PCs as they range from a frugal cleric whose monastic order revers the god of knowledge and brews beer to make money, to a rags-to-riches female rogue who bought herself the equivalent of a condo in town as soon as she could and likes to dress up in pretty clothes and bed handsome noblemen. Given that everyone in the group is (relatively) mature and values roleplay over munchkinism, I don't think anyone will have a problem in being honest and spending what it makes sense for them to spend.

I think Clavis's general ranges make sense. I also like the idea that the more they choose to spend, the more their reputation goes up (at least in terms of how noticed they are). The main hub is an adventuring city that's primary economy is, well, adventuring, so the more noticed they are the better their leads, so it would make sense for adventurers to live as opulently as possible (i.e. spending money leads to making more money; being frugal doesn't).

 

[The Human Target]

Put me in the "its not fun to me so I don't care camp."

Unless they're spending money on super specific items for the purposes of advancing some agenda (buying a bottle of fine wine to impress an important NPC, etc" we just hand wave it.

PCs even at first level in 4E start off pretty rich compared to commoners, and I don't wanna get bogged down in spending time counting coppers.

Plus, there are easy ways to explain it away so that it doesn't break game world realism- as people have said, the PCs can pick up odd jobs. My current party consists of an assassin, a rogue, a bard, an artificer, and a warden. The only one without a blatant way to earn extra coin is the warden. On top of that, I always make it clear that there is a certain amount of "loose change" loot lying around that we don't bother to track. And that gets used for everyday usage by the PCs.

 

[Veritasinpersonam]

I personally do like playing with those rules. I prefer the role playing to the roll playing. Just because I'm not playing my character in his down time doesn't mean that he isn't living his living his life with his gains (ill-gotten or otherwise). If Lizardshoes the Dragonslayer wins a nice horde of coins, he's going to be living it up for quite a while.

The GP cost really depends on your own campaign economy. The suggestion one of the previous posters made (1, copper, 1-5 silver, 1-5 gold) was a sound one. We've done something similar although we'd throw in more cash if the characters were adding specific excesses (drinking only the best wine, 25gp to 100gp a bottle, if they insist on doing it every night it adds up. Wenching, etc.) Depending on situations we may have a 10-15gp 'bribes and other expenses') bonus.

The mechanic we never thought of which was suggested here was adding some form of bonus or penalty depending on the lifestyle choice. A CHA bonus or perhaps a couple minor attack bonuses (first three to five attacks as a "well rested" bonus) would add some roll playing incentives.
However I'd consider an unrested penalty for someone who partied all day and wenched all night (living like bacchus can have its downsides. I'm looking at you, bard).

To cut down on the excessive book keeping I'd just have a table and ask them to select a lifestyle (and give a short story on what the character did on his summer vacation ) and let them subtract the wealth on a good faith basis.

 

[Stoat]

In my experience, once the PC's pass 4th or 5th level, they've glommed enough treasure to live as high on the hog as they want, for as long as they want, without really having to worry about going broke.

Consequently, although I kinda like the idea in the abstract, I've given up charging PC's for daily living expenses.

 

[Barastrondo]

I'd only do something like that in a game where the magic item economy is wholly separate from the luxuries, living expenses, bribes, strongholds and fabulous wealth economy. If the game expects the PCs to have X level of magic items, and those items are purchasable with gold, the players feel pressured not to "waste" money on stuff that isn't used to power them up.

Of course, I prefer to run 4e as a game where the magic item economy is wholly separate from the Fun Stuff economy. I like gold as a roleplaying resource, not as a way to ensure hit-bonus parity.

 

[Jhaelen]

Any ideas?

Tracking cost of living in D&D - and 4e to boot?

I'd charge them nothing.

It should be trivially easy for a group of adventurers to earn enough money to support living like kings.

 

[Janx]

I lke some of the ideas in here on what spending money during downtime represents, including getting XP (celebrim).

What I wouldn't like, as a player, is the DM telling me that "I spent X gold in the 3 months that went by".

Excuse me?

I will tell YOU how I spent my 3 months, and then YOU can tell me how much what my revenue and expenses were.

If the DM is going to model living expenses, then he sure as heck better be modeling income streams during off-time as well.

Fact is, if you have a lot of money, you can live good and invest and maintain that lifestyle. Or you can be a a pirate and waste it all on hookers and blow.

The result is, once you have money, you don't have to run out, unless you choose to run out.

Therefore, cost of living expenses are just adding bookkeeping to model something that probably isn't worth it.

If you really wanted to model it:

player chooses a lifestyle level. This deducts from his immediate cash reserve on a monthly basis (ex. paying the rent from his coin pouch).

player chooses his investment level, this is cash that is removed from his immediate cash reserve. He then gets an income to his immediate cash reserve (investments being paid to him), which he could then re-invest or have in his coin pouch.

With this model, let's say the Plucky picks a 100GP a month lifestyle (we'll call that nice). He has 10,000GP lying around, so he invests that in various businesses (perhaps the bar he owns, or whatever, it's abstract). The GM determines the ROI either as a fixed value or rolls it randomly. This part needs some fiddling. let's say it generates a fixed rate of 1% per month. That means it pays out 1% of 10,000GP, which is 100GP. This means the PC's investments are paying for his lifestyle.

After 1 year of time, the PC isn't any richer, or poorer, yet has lived a nice lifestyle.

Meanwhile, Drinky has sat drinking 100GP a month. He didn't invest. He's out 1,200 gold in 1 year. That means he still has good pile of gold, but he can't keep this up forever. However, it's fair to say that he could have had a trade, so that would have needed to be modeled, alongside "investing"

As a GM, we're always tempted to bring level into things, because deep down, we're trying to burn the PCs resources, to make them poor so we can go back to the good old days of grubbing for money in dungeons.

Frankly, the campaign is supposed to change at high levels. The party is powerful and affulent. That's what they worked for. Rich people have different problems than poor people. Explore them.