D&D 5E Those poor farmers!

[TarionzCousin]

According to the chart on page 127 of the DMG, not only do none of these people make any money from these, they actually have to pay for the privilege of running them!

Well... something needs to motivate naive young farm lads to want to become adventurers!

 

[Fanaelialae]

Maybe WotC could have added a small paragraph about each building in the "Build a stronghold" list detailing what it does and how to handle it in game instead of throwing out names with no further explanation just to have things to spend money on?
They could have taken the space from the nonsensical "Run a business" rule and from the 80 pages of magical items which are supposed to be super rare so that many parties will hardly see any.

Or do new DMs not wish to have a few sentences of rules and guidelines for things the pcs can buy and instead want to be left completely alone with that?

A castle or an abbey doesn't DO anything. They're buildings, and if you don't know what an abbey is, it's easy enough to look up on wikipedia.

If you own a building, what you do with it is up to you (throw lavish parties; house the homeless; decorate with grotesque gargoyles or horrendous pink unicorns).

The Run a Business rule is simplistic but I wouldn't call it nonsensical. Your business can earn money or lose money. If you invest significant time trying to make your business successful, your odds of earning money are a lot better than if you don't. If you ignore your business completely, it will fail. Overall, that seems pretty reasonable and realistic.

As for magic items; leaving magic items out of D&D? There would be a million-gamer march on WotC if they tried that!

Magic items are rare in terms of the world (by default assumptions, you can't just stroll down to the local Magic-Mart and pick up a Vorpal Sword at their annual clearance sale) but it's not as though adventurers are not expected to find them. [MENTION=3424]FireLance[/MENTION] did a nice breakdown of the magic items a party could expect to find based on the default rules here:
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...al-quot-Magic-Item-Distribution#ixzz3LsaAPCqb

 

[SilverfireSage]

Maybe WotC could have added a small paragraph about each building in the "Build a stronghold" list detailing what it does and how to handle it in game instead of throwing out names with no further explanation just to have things to spend money on?

None of those things are something that needs an explanation. If you really need to know what an Abbey is, or an Outpost, or a Temple, look it up in Wikipedia. If you want something that's massively in depth, and details how many floors, how many square feet, what can be put inside, etc. for each building, obviously that would take a heck of a lot more space than a couple of paragraphs.

They could have taken the space from the nonsensical "Run a business" rule

Wait, weren't you just complaining that they weren't explaining a trading post "in game" enough, but now you want to take out the section about an Adventurer running a business completely? Do you know how much more complaining would have gone on if they hadn't included that (more than your own is what I'm saying)?

and from the 80 pages of magical items which are supposed to be super rare so that many parties will hardly see any.

And I suppose high end restaurants should only include 1 or 2 items on their menus because people are only going to go in there once or twice in their lifetimes, right? Does that make any sense at all?

Or do new DMs not wish to have a few sentences of rules and guidelines for things the pcs can buy and instead want to be left completely alone with that?

Good gravy, can't even respond to this one.

 

[MichaelSomething]

As always, I recommend A Magical Medieval Society to ask those burning questions about economics in their D&D world...

 

[Derren]

Oh yes, Wikipedia will be a great help for the DM to add an "Abbey" to a polytheistical world where priests perform miracles on a daily basis and temples have their own private armies to combat the follower of evil gods.

What kind of influence does an Abbey give you? What income if any? Do the PCs even own the Abbey or does it become property of the church? Do they get minor divine spellcasting for free?

And instead of 80 pages of magic items, 60 would have done it too (plenty for the 5-7 items a lvl 20 party has, a point most games won't even reach) and they would have had plenty of space to have suggestions and guidelines for the things they have randomly thrown into the book. There would even have been enough space for working business rules (caravan guard is a pretty comon adventurer starting point, so why not have a paragraph about owning said caravan?) instead of making everything but farms suboptimal.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Oh yes, Wikipedia will be a great help for the DM to add an "Abbey" to a polytheistical world where priests perform miracles on a daily basis and temples have their own private armies to combat the follower of evil gods.

What kind of influence does an Abbey give you? What income if any? Do the PCs even own the Abbey or does it become property of the church? Do they get minor divine spellcasting for free?

And instead of 80 pages of magic items, 60 would have done it too (plenty for the 5-7 items a lvl 20 party has, a point most games won't even reach) and they would have had plenty of space to have suggestions and guidelines for the things they have randomly thrown into the book. There would even have been enough space for working business rules (caravan guard is a pretty comon adventurer starting point, so why not have a paragraph about owning said caravan?) instead of making everything but farms suboptimal.

I can't speak for everyone else, but I'd much rather have an additional 20 pages of magic items than detailed rules on running an abbey. The magic item selection in the 5e DMG felt similar to the 2e DMG, which made me very happy (because even before I learned to actually play D&D, I would spend hours studying those entries).

As a DM I can easily make up what running an abbey does, in the same way that I don't need 5 pages of sewage tables to be able to tell my players whether the streets of a city are pristine or filthy. Running an abbey should largely depend on what the player wants to do with it in any case, which is not something any rule set will be able to cover. If those dwelling within spend all of their time meditating, then it can't be run as a business (unless the player comes up with a clever idea to market meditation classes). On the other hand, many abbeys had gardens, so if the player wants to tend a farm I say let them. Whether the PC or the church owns the abbey is very much campaign specific (some orders might allow clerics to own property, while others might not).

The rules already make it clear whether you can get free divine spells cast. The abbey grants you skilled and unskilled hirelings. Hirelings, by default, do not have spellcasting abilities, so if you want free divine magic you'll have to recruit that talent yourself. You could get free first aid though, if you have a healer on staff.

And of course, if the PC is devoted to the god of chance, their "abbey" might more closely resemble a gambling den than a house of prayer.

Not only do you not need rules for an abbey, no set of rules could possibly cover all of the things that a PC might want to do with it. Players can do what they want with their stronghold, within the limitations that the DM imposes. Maybe WotC will publish a 5e book of Strongholds down the line and you'll get your wish for more rules, but I don't think I'd buy it.

 

[jrowland]

Count me in the camp that says if you write rules and charge money for them, they should not require a rewrite. There's no point in providing rules that are ridiculous.

Based on that logic, and the plethora of opinions on the interwebs, then one simply cannot charge money for rules because someone finds them ridiculous. So here is my FREE RPG:

Rule 1: Make Stuff Up

That's it, enjoy!

 

[aramis erak]

A decent "Peasants in 5E" article could be done... but it really doesn't belong in the corebook for 5E D&D any more than it belonged in the core book for Pendragon... and Pendragon does have a lot about the peasant economy... in supplements.

 

[brehobit]

A decent "Peasants in 5E" article could be done... but it really doesn't belong in the corebook for 5E D&D any more than it belonged in the core book for Pendragon... and Pendragon does have a lot about the peasant economy... in supplements.

Humm, never played Pendragon but would love to develop some of this (mostly for my own sake). Would you mind pointing out which supplements to look for?

Thanks!

 

[Saeviomagy]

Based on that logic, and the plethora of opinions on the interwebs, then one simply cannot charge money for rules because someone finds them ridiculous. So here is my FREE RPG:

Rule 1: Make Stuff Up

That's it, enjoy!

Seems a bit crap, but since the cost to me was effectively zero, I can let it pass.

My issue with the business rules is that they don't work as a world tool OR as a game system. Fixing one or the other would have taken no more space than was already wasted.