Best way to revitalize the economy of a town in D&D

[fafhrd]

Send about half of your military to your lord as scutage. Then deduct that amount from your vassal payment. That cuts your military costs in half and wipes out your dues to your lord altogether. That should put you close to breakeven.

Your party can pick up the slack in the defense arena and negotiate some alliances with the tribes for mutual defense and trade. Hopefully that will gradually raise your treasury into the black.

 

[DonTadow]

Wow, great DM for providing a break down of all of that.

:uts monocle on::

It looks like you could trim the budget in some places. It seems like its peace time but you guys have a standing militia for this small town. Either disband the militia or rent them out to a neighboring town. Perhaps negotiate to consolidate militias with your neighbors. It makes no sense to have such a large standing force in peacetime. If not disband try reducing their numbers. What are you paying the kingdom for? If you have to provide your own military services they don't diserve much of a tribute. Send one of your most diplomatic convoys to convince the king that if the town doesnt reduce his tribute by a third there won't be much of a town left to provide future tributes.

Lastly, stop living the high life. Who are you ? George Bush? Your people are living in debt and you have servants and entertainment costs. Cut them. As a matter of fact cut your advisors as well. Obviously the finanicial advisor isnt really giving you much help is he? You might nto break even, but at least you can fend off receivership one or two more months. In the mean time you are going to have to go and do some adventuring to bring some wealth to your town.

 

[Sigurd]

Dont cut penny ante servant salaries. It is really dangerous to hire new servants and find ones that are loyal. You are new to the office and the servants will\are more than worth thier salaries by keeping things going.


The scutage to your liege is a great idea. If your military has just been decimated by the orcs and your defense is the king's problem. Back charge him for the dead soldiers.

Request a royal garrison between you and the orcs, make it contingent on the continuation of your taxes. Offer to work with the king while you still have resources but explain your situation.

250k? where was that borrowed and for what? Whats the interest rate that generates 3k a month. (how good a deal are you getting with that)

What's the alignment of the king and what laws does he hold himself to?

 

[Warbringer]

OT..

 

[jasper]

What is the size of this city? The numbers seem to be off.

9 cooks to feed how many people 70 people? Fire 3 cooks. Or reduce their pay. Or do the cooks also cook for the military. Food for the palace is 1,179 a month for 70 people. Quit eating caviar and drinking 10 gp bottles of wine with dinner. 12 per person a month but 3 guys are eating stuff 10 x more expensive. I can see fancy food being double or triple but not 10 x on the frontier. Which one of these lords are extreme fat? He has to go on a diet eating all those rich fatty foods. Or is he giving kicks back to the local deli for his midnight caviar orders.

What is the difference between palace upkeep and build maintenance? Numbers seem off.

6000 gp a year for heating??? And you getting how much per month on logging?
250 properties this small city. The numbers seem off. Raise tax to 2% brings in another 6750 leave just over 5 K in a month short..

No road, harbor, mill (all types), fees or duties.

Ok the numbers are totally off to me. Unless someone is cheating you. Call in your seneschal (or butler) and accountant, clerks, and ask some questions.

You have a court house and judges but no fines? The judges are either corrupt or someone in the building is. How many cases are being held each month? Where are all the fines going to?

You got 458 people directly on the public payroll! How big is this city again?

Either
The numbers are way off.
Or. The dm has hidden plenty of plot hooks in your budget.
Or. Both.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Whats the population of the town? Seems like a lot of soldiers to me - I'd expect 300+ soldiers to be guarding a place a city of 30,000 or more. I'd RP out some advice from that financial advisor (with Sense Motives and maybe Detect Thoughts up). Let's see - if you have a town of 30,000, and let's assume an average income of 350gp/year for the typical townsperson. That translates into 10.5 million GP in income. You're only getting your hands on less than 1% of that. You should be getting your hands on much more than that - at least 10X. I'd look to make sure that you're actually getting all the taxes that you should be getting.

Also, as you're probably protecting the Kingdom from assault in some manner, I'd try to see if the tribute can be scaled back.

And to Jasper - Building maintenance is a line item under the palace upkeep category; that's probably where you were getting confused.

 

[babomb]

(doesn't help that our army got devastated by a combined orc/dragon horde a couple months ago).

Ding ding ding! Kill a dragon and take its stuff. At your level, it wouldn't be a very big dragon, but there's still income to be had (and one less dragon to attack you). Raids on the orcs (led by the PCs, of course) may also produce some spoils and allow you to cut military expenditures.

We do have a juvenile silver dragon living with us. We rescued her from being killed by a bunch of brigands (also got an airship out of the deal, though it needs some serious repairs before it can be used, and our wizard can't do them himself).

About fixing the airship... problem is that the wizard of the party is pretty sure it's going to take a powerful wizard to fix it (it's not a matter of patching holes in the hull, it's fixing the magic that helps it navigate... right now it can't actually turn, just go up and down and forward and back).

Find someone who can fix it and fix it. It will be a boon for trade and can offer military advantages. In the meantime, is there anything interesting in a straight line with the airship?

I'm sure we could establish trade routes, assuming we can find something to trade. The city is on a river with a modicum of fishermen. Once the mine's back up, we can trade the copper. I like the idea of trading with tribesmen to the north. There must be non-orcs around, and setting up good relations with them could be very useful.

Goodness! With a river you should be getting all kinds of trade! I notice on your balance sheet you're paying a harbormaster but not getting any taxes from docking fees or anything like that. Someone suggested privatizing the harbormaster and taxing him. That sounds good. Also, you're on a river and not getting mill taxes? What gives? If there are no mills, build some (or better, have someone pay you for the right to build them). And of course, these would be privately run and taxed.

And why isn't your courthouse producing any money in fines and so forth?

Mining has the highest percentage tax, so get that mine reopened ASAP. If work needs to be done on it to open it, have some soldiers do the work when they've nothing else to do.

I wouldn't cut back on maintenance. With the possible exception of groundskeeping, you'll probably end up paying three times as much in repairs. Only cut it if absolutely necessary, and raise it again when you can afford to do so. On the other hand, you can probably cut back on food and entertainment (unless said entertainment is for visiting lords, and therefore to your political advantage; even then you could perhaps reduce it).

Whom is that loan from? Try to pay it off (at least partly) in political favors or something other than gold.

 

[painandgreed]

Well, those loan payments are killing you. Along with the tribute to the king, that's almost all the money you're bringing in. You could appeal to the king to lower tribute, after all, he's charging 40% of everything.

From there you just have to cut costs and stop living beyond your means. Fire a cook or two. It's never good to fire soldiers because they just become bandits instead of farmers. instead just ride out and take care of those orcs with them and don't replace the attrition. Be sure to reward the ones that survive, but it's something that has to be done anyway.

Your harbor is probably barely even breaking even. You might be better off without it.

I also think that food is off. Food prices in D&D tend to be way off, especially in the incredibly stupid Arms & Equipment guide where barley costs more than wheat*. In reality, your soldiers should cost about 3 GP a month to feed each and even ten times that would mean eating like kings. This shoud be mostly offset by the huntsmen you have hired who can probably feed both you and them. heating costs are also pretty high as again, you could just hire a few guys to do nothing but chop wood for you, plus I don't think you really need to try and heat a castle anyway. It doesn't work. IIRC, they just wore heavier clothes for the most part even indoors rather than trying to heat a stone building with no insulation.

You should only need one butler. The butler is usually the HEAD manservant. You certainly don't need one per party member.

Anyway, as long as you've got that 3,000 Gp per month in debt (which means you probably don't want more debt), I really don't see you getting in the black. No way around it, you're going to have to go adventure to make the big haul to clear out the debt or give up your postition as head of the city.

*...or where marzipan is 20 GP/oz while sugar and almonds run a few gold a pound (knowing that marzipan is just a 50/50 mix of sugar and almonds).

 

[Warbringer]

resolving debt issues:

Expense Reduction:
Reduce military expenses by 1/4: (2,365gp saving)
Reduce Entertainment by 1/2 (500gp saving)
Reduce Civil Admin by 1/4 (414 gp saving)

Revenue Increase:
Lodging falls under Entertainment tax bracket generating additional (960 gp)
Property tax increase by 1/2% (due to cost of providing safe area to live) (4,500gp)

Net change 8,739 gp

Is debt repayment int only?

 

[Herobizkit]

After reviewing your expenses, it seems to me that you're overpaying just about everyone in your army!

Any non-military personnel should be working for silvers or coppers a month, not GOLD!

Time to fire and re-hire people for a lower wage, or do without.

On the up side, that's an amazing amount of ledger-fu you have going on there. Good work!