Level Up (A5E) Confused by Lifestyle, Prestige, and Supply Rules

[xiphumor]

The Adventurer's Guide has the following table on page 347 describing the relationship between costs and prestige bonus
Poor

Lifestyle	Meal Cost	Lodging Cost	Daily Cost of Living	Prestige Modifier
Poor	5 cp	1 sp	2 sp	-1
Moderate	4 sp	6 sp	1.5 gp	0
Rich	1 gp	3 gp	5 gp	+1

The rules also state that normally, Supply costs 5 sp. This leads me to several questions. It seems as though the formula is roughly 2 meals + 1 lodging = daily expenses (rounded up to a round-ish number for Moderate). I can kind of see that 5 sp might be what you'd survive on, but 8 sp would be preferable, and 2 gp would be luxurious. But what happens if you're poor and only eating 1 sp? It can't be that all poor people are constantly gaining levels of fatigue or they'd all be dead in a just a few days. What happens if you try to live on 1 sp per day worth of food?

Also, how does one go about changing one's prestige modifier through one's lifestyle? Does it take a certain amount of time? What if you eat like a king but live like a beggar?

Can anyone shed light on this?

 

[Faolyn]

Several Possibilities.

One: This is one of those things where PCs are different from NPCs.

Two: Prices are jacked for PCs; or rather, familiar locals pay less. They are likely gathering, growing, or hunting at least some of their own food, and/or buying the raw ingredients in bulk, like flour or even grain that they have to mill themselves rather than a loaf of bread. In a setting that uses the real-world thing where lots of people relied on "fast food" (like the Roman thermopolia), well, prices are jacked for PCs and lowered for familiar locals.

Most poor NPCs either own their own homes (hovels) since D&Dland rarely has a full feudal system going on and assumes a greater amount of peasant freedom and wealth, or they live rent-free somewhere (maybe under a bridge or in a tent city), or are paying for at least part of their rent with services or barter.

Three: Many poverty-stricken NPCs would be sickly with various unpleasant diseases like typhoid or cholera, which would be represented by having at least one level of exhaustion at all times. You can handwave this by saying that they eat enough to only have one, maybe two levels of exhaustion, but are rarely so starved that they go below this. But they're living on a knife's edge, and a bad day or two can spell certain death.

Four: if you eat like a king and live like a beggar, then I'd say that the "living like a beggar" part would beat the "eating like a king" (it's more obvious) and there would be a prestige penalty --except in certain circumstances, where the individual owns a restaurant and few people know he lives like a beggar, or he's a member of the Society of Eccentric Gourmands where his exquisite dining is more important than his squalid lifestyle.

 

[xiphumor]

Several Possibilities.

One: This is one of those things where PCs are different from NPCs.

Two: Prices are jacked for PCs; or rather, familiar locals pay less. They are likely gathering, growing, or hunting at least some of their own food, and/or buying the raw ingredients in bulk, like flour or even grain that they have to mill themselves rather than a loaf of bread. In a setting that uses the real-world thing where lots of people relied on "fast food" (like the Roman thermopolia), well, prices are jacked for PCs and lowered for familiar locals.

Most poor NPCs either own their own homes (hovels) since D&Dland rarely has a full feudal system going on and assumes a greater amount of peasant freedom and wealth, or they live rent-free somewhere (maybe under a bridge or in a tent city), or are paying for at least part of their rent with services or barter.

Three: Many poverty-stricken NPCs would be sickly with various unpleasant diseases like typhoid or cholera, which would be represented by having at least one level of exhaustion at all times. You can handwave this by saying that they eat enough to only have one, maybe two levels of exhaustion, but are rarely so starved that they go below this. But they're living on a knife's edge, and a bad day or two can spell certain death.

Four: if you eat like a king and live like a beggar, then I'd say that the "living like a beggar" part would beat the "eating like a king" (it's more obvious) and there would be a prestige penalty --except in certain circumstances, where the individual owns a restaurant and few people know he lives like a beggar, or he's a member of the Society of Eccentric Gourmands where his exquisite dining is more important than his squalid lifestyle.

To be clear, I'm not confused as to how this applies to NPCs. I'm confused as to how it applies to PCs. What happens if my player with an Urchin background decides they only want to have a poor lifestyle?

*Edit: Changed NPCs to PCs, as I intended.

 

[Faolyn]

To be clear, I'm not confused as to how this applies to NPCs. I'm confused as to how it applies to NPCs. What happens if my player with an Urchin background decides they only want to have a poor lifestyle?

I assume you mean PCs the second time.

If the Urchin wants to have a poor lifestyle, then they're having a poor lifestyle, with all the issues that contains. You can RP them haggling for better prices, if you like.

 

[Morrus]

Aha, that old bugbear -- D&D and economics!

 

[Szadek]

I would assume eating a meal takes place of needing to use supply. Supplies are pretty much field rations which generally cost more then a hunk of bread, cheap pot luck stew and some water, that's just my thinking on it. For example I can live off ramen (14 cents a pack), water and cheap sweets (a horrible diet that many have done in their life), but if I am going camping and unless I'm hunting for my food and water I'm buying field rations that wont go bad anytime soon that will keep me nourished.

As far a eating like a king and living like a bagger? Most people would think your a foolish person wasting your resources and you would be treated as someone with a poor lifestyle. That's also the fun of such games, the RP of living a poor lifestyle is different then a Rich and opens social doors for your character defiantly. Also with the right skills you can con you way into other people believing your lifestyle is far above what it is if your GM allows such creative measures.

 

[Steampunkette]

When you're staying in one location, doing some labor with a lot of time to rest and relax, and can generally grab food that is easily accessible and relatively fresh (Because farming community) it's super easy to get enough calories to survive on.

An adventurer is traveling, fighting, exploring, doing magic, and other stuff on a journey. There's very little "Sit down and rest" and what supplies you have can't be fresh but need to keep for days, weeks, even -months- on the road (Depending on the order you eat your way through your supply and gain more along the way). Way more output means way more input!

Also of note: The 2,000 calories per day thing was based on a 1990 -survey- of self-reporting. Dudes reported an intake of 2k-3k calories per day, while ladies reported around 1,600-2,000 per day. And then a lot of rounding happened. But in reality?

Depending on your height, weight, age, and exercise you may need as little as 1,200 calories to maintain a healthy body weight, or up to 4,000 to keep functioning well on a battlefield.

The kind of foods you need, how it needs to be preserved, how it has to be stored, and how much of it there is all kind of gets homogenized into those 5 silver pieces compared to the 2 of a poor lifestyle for a day.

Someone relying on Supply to live is eating a lot more, and higher quality, food than the Poor Diet person is... but they're also putting out way more effort, so they need more in order to maintain themselves than the Poor Diet.

 

[Stalker0]

I think the key is that supply isn't just food, its food that can last a while. The meals that the poor eat, that's going bad that evening, its not something they can just put in their pocket and it still be good to go the next day.

 

[Morrus]

If I understand the question right, it sounds like it can be summed up as you think the poor meal should cost more?

Supply is a term which refers to food, water, expendable traveling supplies, etc. It keeps you alive when traveling, and the cost of it varies depending on how nice you want it to be. You can spend 10gp per Supply and eat like a king when on the road. Supply costs whatever the Narrator says it costs.

One example of Supply, the rations in the AG equipment list, would not be suitable to live on permanently. It costs 5sp (about the same as a moderate meal) but will store pretty much forever, and probably doesn't taste great, but a peasant's 5cp hunk of stale bread and turnip soup ain't gonna be edible after a couple of days' travel.

The important thing to remember is that Supply doesn't cost 5sp, rations do.

Rations are just one example of Supply. The peasants 1cp meal is also an example of Supply, but it's not rations, and won't travel well. The king's 20gp turkey dinner is also one Supply, and it, too is not rations and wouldn't travel well. It probably tastes a lot better though.

So Supply can cost anything from 1cp to whatever the finest chef in the land charges for a fancy dinner. Rations cost 5sp.

 

[xiphumor]

I think the key is that supply isn't just food, its food that can last a while. The meals that the poor eat, that's going bad that evening, its not something they can just put in their pocket and it still be good to go the next day.

But the weird thing is that the rules specify that you have to consume 1 Supply each time you finish a long rest or take a level of fatigue.