Building costs in 4th Edition

[SoulsFury]

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

I still use the 2nd edition version and it works quite well.

 

[lkj]

There's a pretty decent DDI article on building strongholds. I found it very useful:

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I still use the 2nd edition version and it works quite well.

I still use the Judge's Guild castle construction rules they sold on letter sized punched cardstock back in the mid 70's Nobody has improved on that. The costs are actually pretty reasonable for 4e too.

 

[Zaran]

If you use the rules in that 395 article, I would change the costs to a silver standard instead of gold. 25k for 300 spaces is alot of gold for such a small building. It comes out to 833 gold per space. That's a ridiculus amount of gold for a 5' square. Farmers would never be able to afford a 5' square hut. And 25k is alot of gold even for paragon level characters. Make it cheaper so they can justify the hit on resources.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you use the rules in that 395 article, I would change the costs to a silver standard instead of gold. 25k for 300 spaces is alot of gold for such a small building. It comes out to 833 gold per space. That's a ridiculus amount of gold for a 5' square. Farmers would never be able to afford a 5' square hut. And 25k is alot of gold even for paragon level characters. Make it cheaper so they can justify the hit on resources.

A decimal point must be slipped there? 25,000 / 300 = 250/3 = 83.3 gp / square. So your peasant with a 3x3 square hut is around 720 gp, which if you figure 100gp/yr income is in just about the right ballpark.

 

[S'mon]

A decimal point must be slipped there? 25,000 / 300 = 250/3 = 83.3 gp / square. So your peasant with a 3x3 square hut is around 720 gp, which if you figure 100gp/yr income is in just about the right ballpark.

I put the typical wattle & daub hut at around 100gp, but then my peasants don't earn 100gp/year. A rich family might make 180gp/year, but for a single man 3gp/m, 36gp/year is typical.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I put the typical wattle & daub hut at around 100gp, but then my peasants don't earn 100gp/year. A rich family might make 180gp/year, but for a single man 3gp/m, 36gp/year is typical.

Yeah, it is hard to say if 36gp or 100gp make sense. I mean the economics are certainly not that exact. I figured 100gp was a nice round number that works reasonably well with the other numbers. Of course some peasant is never going to handle gold pieces anyway. It is all labor obligations, 'depreciation' of capital, and of course a whole slew of different cuts that go here and there in all directions, either in goods or service. I figure at that rate your peasant has zilch left at the end of the year, and might have a handful of 'gp' to actually play with in a whole year. He and his family are pretty much stuck permanently where they are. Of course in a society where there's overall probably nothing in the way of economic growth that's pretty much how it would be. I imagine pretty close to the lot of your average medieval European peasant.