Building costs in 4th Edition

[brunswick]

Hiya folks,

Just a quick question.

I'm in work so I don't have access to my 4th Edition books but which book, if any, gives prices for building a tower, keep etc., My players are talking about their characters setting up a 'base of operations' and I'd like to check out the prices for buildings before they come over to play.

Thanks in advance,


Bruns.

 

[Grydan]

Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium is the only book to do so. Just released in Premier stores. Available exclusively in hobby shops later this month.

 

[Shadus]

There isn't a set price in the books as far as I recall, but dragon magazine 395 set up prices.

For the most part, it's set up so that each section of a stronghold costs a different price, and you get a bonus to certain skills when in different rooms. For example, when in your throne room you get a bonus to diplomacy, and in the torture room you get a bonus to intimidate. Each kind of room has set limits on how big it can be, but otherwise can be designed however the PCs want.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I would heartily recommend having it not matter. If you assign a gold price to buildings (and sailing ships and all manner of non-adventuring things), then you give the DM a dilemma.

If he doesn't give the PCs more money, they spend all their cash on the tower and end up without sufficient equipment for their level, and the basic assumptions of the game start to break down, leading to you, the DM, having to adjust the game by hand instead of being able to use the quite effective tools that the game provides.

Alternately, you give the PCs more money and then they decide not to buy the tower after all, instead buying more equipment. Again - game balance suffers and your task becomes more difficult.

There's basically 3 solutions: either make it so that adventuring gear and fluff are bought with different resources OR limit how adventuring gear may be acquired OR make all your fluff into crunch.

For the first, simply keep adventuring gear being bought with gold and make fluff require other things. If you want to build a keep, you'll need the right to build it, land, a quarry, workers, men to defend it etc, most of which wouldn't usually be bought with gold in the average medieval society. I mean sure you have wages to pay, but they're a pittance compared with the average magical weapon, and no amount of money will get you land without political influence.

Easy solution there.

The second one is achieved through some major tweaking of the magic item rarity rules. Once you've bought an item for every slot that there's an item for, you're done spending cash on adventuring. So simply go through and cut the common items down so that it's not possible for the party to spend more than the baseline treasure amounts on, then give them mountains of gold. Inherent bonuses make this easier, because then you don't have to have ANY common items in the game at all.

The third has a hard way and an easy way. The easy way is to simply repay the PCs all the cash they invest into their keep. They buy and staff a forge for 10k? Their resident smith insists on upgradeing a weapon to the tune of 10k. They build an orphanage? They get a boon from the goddess of mercy equal to it's cost. Essentially money they spend on the keep becomes random loot.

The hard way is to tie their expenses into the story in such a way that they get their money's worth. For a baseline work out what magical items they could have bought and then give them encounters in and around their fortress with big enough home-turf bonuses to mirror those items.

 

[Shadus]

Another Possible route is to have it as a reward. PCs hear that the Evil Wizard is using Orcs to control slaves in one of his magical towers. PCs go on a mini-quest to free the slave and defeat the Orcs, and as a reward the PCs offer there service and treat the PCs like royally in the Tower.

Just an idea.

 

[S'mon]

Since strongholds take a long time to build, IME the usual approach if you're not Edward I is to take over an existing one, not build your own American Frontiersman style (pace Gygax & the 1e DMG). So I would generally recommend using pre-existing structures, and the PCs are awarded it, seize it, or are sent to garrison it, rather than buying it for cash.

If it is new build, then I think "small amounts of cash, lots of time & labour" is the way to go, to minimise interaction with the magic item economy.

Alternately, id DM points out that 4e PCs can never afford to buy nice stuff anyway:
Dungeon Economics 101 | The Id DM
So why not spend your meagre gold on a nice castle.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I think people overstate the interaction between gold and the magic item economy. Lets look at this in detail:

1) You cannot make items beyond your level.
2) You cannot make items that are uncommon or rare without DM cooperation.
3) Even vast numbers of at-level consumables won't break the game.
4) The DM has total control over what items the party can buy.
5) Higher level items are VERY expensive.

So, imagine a party with limitless gold. What can they do? They could craft a whole pile of at-level common items, which consists of basically vanilla magical armor, weapons, etc. These are useful items, but equipping every member of the party with these items is going to have only a slight impact on power level, especially given that the game already supposes that the PCs have level appropriate equipment. Usually they will already have items better than what they can make anyway.

Lets suppose the players decide to make a whole raft of healing potions. This won't help them a whole lot either. At some levels a potion is a bit better than just spending a surge, but in combat they require a whole standard action to use, making them marginal at best. Outside of combat there are a ton of other ways to get better results than a potion, even for a 1st level PC (which is the very best case for a potion).

There are a few other consumables that might be pretty useful if you could have limitless numbers of them, but all of these require Enchant Item to make, and very few of them are common. Even the best of them require actions to use and have only modest effects (imagine a party with heaps of whetstones, magic arrows, and various potions). The cumulative effect might actually be moderately impressive, but within a level or two these items will be basically sub-par and not worth using anymore, and more appropriate items will be multiple times more expensive.

So, there's effectively no reason to care about how much gold PCs have available to them. You can safely give them whatever amount you feel like they'll be able to have fun with. The real question is just how you motivate excessively rich PCs, and the answer obviously is that wealth should be at most a marginal motivating factor in most games. If it IS a huge motivating factor then just don't go overboard. Even a pretty oversized chunk of treasure will shrink to insignificance in a couple levels.

 

[Nyronus]

I think people overstate the interaction between gold and the magic item economy. Lets look at this in detail:

1) You cannot make items beyond your level.
2) You cannot make items that are uncommon or rare without DM cooperation.
3) Even vast numbers of at-level consumables won't break the game.
4) The DM has total control over what items the party can buy.
5) Higher level items are VERY expensive.

So, imagine a party with limitless gold. What can they do? They could craft a whole pile of at-level common items, which consists of basically vanilla magical armor, weapons, etc. These are useful items, but equipping every member of the party with these items is going to have only a slight impact on power level, especially given that the game already supposes that the PCs have level appropriate equipment. Usually they will already have items better than what they can make anyway.

Lets suppose the players decide to make a whole raft of healing potions. This won't help them a whole lot either. At some levels a potion is a bit better than just spending a surge, but in combat they require a whole standard action to use, making them marginal at best. Outside of combat there are a ton of other ways to get better results than a potion, even for a 1st level PC (which is the very best case for a potion).

There are a few other consumables that might be pretty useful if you could have limitless numbers of them, but all of these require Enchant Item to make, and very few of them are common. Even the best of them require actions to use and have only modest effects (imagine a party with heaps of whetstones, magic arrows, and various potions). The cumulative effect might actually be moderately impressive, but within a level or two these items will be basically sub-par and not worth using anymore, and more appropriate items will be multiple times more expensive.

So, there's effectively no reason to care about how much gold PCs have available to them. You can safely give them whatever amount you feel like they'll be able to have fun with. The real question is just how you motivate excessively rich PCs, and the answer obviously is that wealth should be at most a marginal motivating factor in most games. If it IS a huge motivating factor then just don't go overboard. Even a pretty oversized chunk of treasure will shrink to insignificance in a couple levels.

Actually, some of the ammunition enchantments are pretty powerful, particularly the +xd6 elemental damage. Also, giving characters free access to whetstones is basically giving them a free damage boost, and access to frost and lightning elemental shenanagins without the opportunity cost of a weapon enchantment. Hell, it's one of the few ways you can get both at once. It also makes melee-centric fire based tieflings more powerful since they easily set up fire vulnerability, frost vulnerability, and going damage of essentially both types with every swing. Now, granted, you can still do this, but you give up most of the raw power (ongoing damage, bigger vulnerability), for the utility of triggering feats and features you wouldn't be able to before. People already go out of their way to use things like whetstones for this purpose. Giving them unlimited money basically gives them a free power boost.

 

[Ghost2020]

Go pickup the D&D 3rd ed Stronghold Builder's Guidebook , that should give you enough of an idea to get going.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Actually, some of the ammunition enchantments are pretty powerful, particularly the +xd6 elemental damage. Also, giving characters free access to whetstones is basically giving them a free damage boost, and access to frost and lightning elemental shenanagins without the opportunity cost of a weapon enchantment. Hell, it's one of the few ways you can get both at once. It also makes melee-centric fire based tieflings more powerful since they easily set up fire vulnerability, frost vulnerability, and going damage of essentially both types with every swing. Now, granted, you can still do this, but you give up most of the raw power (ongoing damage, bigger vulnerability), for the utility of triggering feats and features you wouldn't be able to before. People already go out of their way to use things like whetstones for this purpose. Giving them unlimited money basically gives them a free power boost.

Oh, I don't disagree that there's a measurable power boost from limitless consumables. OTOH realistically nothing is ACTUALLY limitless, it was more of a thought experiment. Whetstones are also uncommon (naturally), so the DM could shut that down if it really got out of hand. Overall at this point, with rarity in place, gold really is pretty decoupled from PC power. If you never get any gold it will definitely crimp your style some, but having gonzo bucks for a level or whatever really won't break the game, contrary to what many people seem to think. I suspect people just don't sit down and think about all the other 'firewalls' that 4e has. Monty Haul isn't strictly speaking DEAD, but he's definitely been beaten heartily and sent to the basement.