BlivetWidget
Explorer
I was casually wondering to myself what it would cost to attend a wizard boarding school/academy using 5e rules, and came up with some numbers. A good number of assumptions had to be made, of course. Thoughts welcome, but mostly I just wanted to put this out there in case anyone else was interested.
Assumptions:
-Attending a wizard boarding school is a formative experience and gives you a background flavored by the education (which does not limit it to Sage; say you want to be a merchant, the school pays for you to work under a merchant for a year as your capstone, etc.). That is to say, I'm accounting for background skills, training, and equipment as part of the education. I used the Sage background as the base assumption for purposes of starting equipment value.
-Any time a background or class feature presented an equipment option, I went with the most expensive option (dagger vs quarterstaff, etc.)
-Students live a "modest" lifestyle (students are in fact an example of the modest lifestyle in the PHB Lifestyle Expenses), so their room and board is 1 gp per day.
-Each student pays the instructor body a salary of 2 gp per day (PHB Skilled Labor), split between the headmaster and 8 masters (one for each tradition). Note the school has other sources of income and instructor perks, so this is not the total of their salary, just the portion the student body pays for their time.
-The school has 42 students. This silly number is simply a happy accident of the layout I drew having 21 rooms and deciding on 2 students per room. A student/teacher ratio of around 5/1 seems appropriate for learning such esoteric topics (this is not a state institution fueled by a mandatory education requirement).
-Learning any skill will be covered under the Training downtime activity. I used the updated rules in XGE, so 10 weeks per skill. With no other reference, I applied this very broadly to learning anything: weapons (grouped together because they're all "simple" weapons), class features (scribing spells, preparing spells, etc.), each cantrip, each saving throw, etc.
On to the results:
Time: 6 years (with 20 skills/features/saves to learn, the calculation yields 200 weeks or 3.85 years straight through. Multiplying by 3/2 will account for holidays, breaks, field trips, etc).
Room and board for 6 years: 2190 gp
Equipment cost: 438.5 gp
Instructor salary cost for 6 years: 4380 gp
Total cost over 6 years: 7008.5 gp
Yearly cost: 1200 gp (rounded up from 1168 gp)
Yearly cost minimum: 440 gp (if the instructors waive their salary cost for a gifted student of lesser means).
Which seems reasonable to me. I know some settings treat even 1 gp as something the average laborer will never see in one place, but the average farmer isn't going to send their kids off to a wizard academy. 1200 gp per year is between the lifestyle costs of Comfortable and Wealthy. 440 gp per year is just a bit more than a Modest lifestyle. And at the boarding school, it includes not just room and board, but also equipment and training.
Thoughts?
Assumptions:
-Attending a wizard boarding school is a formative experience and gives you a background flavored by the education (which does not limit it to Sage; say you want to be a merchant, the school pays for you to work under a merchant for a year as your capstone, etc.). That is to say, I'm accounting for background skills, training, and equipment as part of the education. I used the Sage background as the base assumption for purposes of starting equipment value.
-Any time a background or class feature presented an equipment option, I went with the most expensive option (dagger vs quarterstaff, etc.)
-Students live a "modest" lifestyle (students are in fact an example of the modest lifestyle in the PHB Lifestyle Expenses), so their room and board is 1 gp per day.
-Each student pays the instructor body a salary of 2 gp per day (PHB Skilled Labor), split between the headmaster and 8 masters (one for each tradition). Note the school has other sources of income and instructor perks, so this is not the total of their salary, just the portion the student body pays for their time.
-The school has 42 students. This silly number is simply a happy accident of the layout I drew having 21 rooms and deciding on 2 students per room. A student/teacher ratio of around 5/1 seems appropriate for learning such esoteric topics (this is not a state institution fueled by a mandatory education requirement).
-Learning any skill will be covered under the Training downtime activity. I used the updated rules in XGE, so 10 weeks per skill. With no other reference, I applied this very broadly to learning anything: weapons (grouped together because they're all "simple" weapons), class features (scribing spells, preparing spells, etc.), each cantrip, each saving throw, etc.
On to the results:
Time: 6 years (with 20 skills/features/saves to learn, the calculation yields 200 weeks or 3.85 years straight through. Multiplying by 3/2 will account for holidays, breaks, field trips, etc).
Room and board for 6 years: 2190 gp
Equipment cost: 438.5 gp
Instructor salary cost for 6 years: 4380 gp
Total cost over 6 years: 7008.5 gp
Yearly cost: 1200 gp (rounded up from 1168 gp)
Yearly cost minimum: 440 gp (if the instructors waive their salary cost for a gifted student of lesser means).
Which seems reasonable to me. I know some settings treat even 1 gp as something the average laborer will never see in one place, but the average farmer isn't going to send their kids off to a wizard academy. 1200 gp per year is between the lifestyle costs of Comfortable and Wealthy. 440 gp per year is just a bit more than a Modest lifestyle. And at the boarding school, it includes not just room and board, but also equipment and training.
Thoughts?
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