D&D 5E Rebuilding a city

[Ancalagon]

the state of the crops, livestock and populate is key. If those are all severely damaged, gold won't fix the problem.

small wood home- 250gp

That seems way too high. How can peasants afford homes? People would build homes/huts from local material. Labor was the main limiting factor I think.

 

[Balfore]

the state of the crops, livestock and populate is key. If those are all severely damaged, gold won't fix the problem.



That seems way too high. How can peasants afford homes? People would build homes/huts from local material. Labor was the main limiting factor I think.

Fortunately, the cultists were of the element of water, but buildings and structures were the mostly damaged.

As for the cost of a shed for a peasant..
That's the point, the royalty owned it, they paid a lifetime for it..much like today's homes.

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[Lanliss]

I would probably do something similar to Borderlands 2. At one point you save a town, and there is then a side quest to get/make a few different items to assist in protecting it. Maybe have your players go hunt down some old books with ancient lost protection spells, or go to a larger town/city to enlist/force help from the big wigs there. Then make sure to make a throwback to the town every now and then. "You know that protection spell on your town? It is weakening, and needs a new huge gem as a power source within a month. The townspeople did some digging before contacting you, and know where a mine is that has what you need."

 

[mcmillan]

Similar to Lanliss' suggestion, you might be interested in this set of blog posts exploring a similar idea as a campaign
http://www.sarahdarkmagic.com/content/dd-idea-reclaim-riverbend
http://www.sarahdarkmagic.com/search/node/riverbend

 

[Eltab]

Waterdeep is just downstream, as I recall, so you can get anything you want if you also buy wagons/pole-barges (and crews) to move it in.

If the workmen just cut down nearby forest, log cabin houses should be cheap because the lumber is free. Labor will be free, too, as long as everybody is cooperating to help each other out.

When I played in Princes of the Apocalypse, we PCs cleared out the cave nearby. If yours did also (and haven't moved into the lair themselves), they can offer it as a safe place to stay for a while.

 

[Balfore]

Well, the dud clear out Feathergale Spire, Sacred Stone Monistary and Rivergard Keep.
(Rivergard is there Haaon the Butcher is hold up with a clone army, which is where they wanted to use as a base, but when they went to finish off the other cultists, Haaon moved in).
So, they hold a sentimental connection to Red Larch with their connections and friends.

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[Luchador]

Be sure to build more pylons than you think you need. Trust me.

 

[antieon]

That seems way too high. How can peasants afford homes? People would build homes/huts from local material. Labor was the main limiting factor I think.

Totally agree that 250gp for a small house is ridiculously high. According to 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, p. 86 under "Labor" - "The standard wage for a day laborer is a single silver piece." Being generous on time and resources, say it would take a full ten day to build, with 10 men - you are looking at a max of 10gp for labor costs, and part of this cost is these laborer's gathering the local materials of wood, stone, thatch, and what ever else you need. Be generous and double that to 20gp total for the nails, rope, door lock, and misc small items. This is an assumption that the land is given to the peasant to work the land, and allowed to use local materials to build the home.

 

[Horwath]

Totally agree that 250gp for a small house is ridiculously high. According to 3rd Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, p. 86 under "Labor" - "The standard wage for a day laborer is a single silver piece." Being generous on time and resources, say it would take a full ten day to build, with 10 men - you are looking at a max of 10gp for labor costs, and part of this cost is these laborer's gathering the local materials of wood, stone, thatch, and what ever else you need. Be generous and double that to 20gp total for the nails, rope, door lock, and misc small items. This is an assumption that the land is given to the peasant to work the land, and allowed to use local materials to build the home.

I belive that 250gp is a price for someone that wants to buy finnished house and some small part of land next to it. A front and backyard.

In 3.5e cost of materials was by default 1/3 of the price, but it could get down to 1/6 or 1/10 of the price if it was readily available and in close proximity.

So, simple wooden house could cost from 25 to 80 GP in materials, closer to 25 IMO.

Also 1 sp per day is for an unskilled laborer. That means someone to help you out but does not know to work on his own. Think about it as legal minimal wage for your country, or even lower. You cant go far with that.

Some profesions go for few gp per day. A profesional mercenery(with PC class levels) could cost 1gp per class level per day.

Even if you earn 1sp a day and save up only 1 cp a day you would save up for a simple house in under 7 years.

That is realistic. In modern world people take credit lines to build/buy a house for 25 to 30 years.

 

[antieon]

Also 1 sp per day is for an unskilled laborer. That means someone to help you out but does not know to work on his own. Think about it as legal minimal wage for your country, or even lower. You cant go far with that.

I understand what skilled labor is, that is why construction crews generally have a foreman to direct those unskilled laborers on what to do. This is exactly the type of laborer you are using to make small peasant wood homes that are primarily wood, with some rough stone for such things as a foundation and fireplace. Obviously you would need more skilled laborers and masons if you were creating a temple / castle / fortress of some sort, but for the average peasant this cheaper construction would suffice.

Let us look at a blacksmith for instance as I consider this skilled labor to see if the unskilled laborer at a single silver a day is in-line with my thinking above. In this example we will use a chainmail tunic which costs 75gp in D&D world. As there is no definitive time it takes to create one from historical reading, I have found various people online that have created their own chainmail tunic and are using them as an example. The example in particular was a mail tunic utilizing butte style chain links (most common in history) as it was much easier to produce. He used over 28,000 links and it took him roughly 200 hours to produce. Say someone with more experience creating them could do this same work in half the time giving us a total of 100 hours. We know most laborers would work from sun up to sun down. In a typical ten day that means the laborer could create 1 per week. Now we also assume that a skilled laborer would be paid more than an unskilled laborer.

75gp (cost of chainmail) / 100 hours of time = 7sp 5cp per hour of the skilled laborers time, without even considering what the raw material costs. We could over analyze this thing to death but using just the 75gp for a chain tunic seems like that price list might be in-line with what real costs for hours of labor and raw material would have been that could be applied to the true costs.


All in all I think 1sp/day for cheap construction labor is completely plausible and that a small house for a peasant could be created for less than 25gp.