Level Up (A5E) Clarifications on Strongholds and Followers

[tetrasodium]

Days off, different shifts, & support staff like porters janitors etc. That alone could easily cut a third to half of those tokens without even trying if not more.

 

[Ragnir]

Days off in a fantasy setting? I doubt it. Different shifts? Usually 8-10 hours work and then it's closed (I'm talking about a Lab, not a castle where everyone lives there... thanks god). Ok, take 1-2 for support staff, but then let's add room for their stuff in there. Oh, add an entrance room for the porter, wait there goes his own 10x10 feet so we can't take him off. Ok, just the closet for the 2 janitors we have (2 janitors for that room, still quite a lot but it's ok, we're luxurious). Remove 2 tokens even 4... Still crowded. Not to mention the lab I used is intentionally with low furniture and stuff to be able to fit everyone. If I add the equipment that lab should have not even 10 would fit there.

 

[Faolyn]

I would assume that the number of people working there also include people who work outside the stronghold. Groundskeepers, handymen, drivers, even people who are frequently elsewhere for business.

Also, judging by what (admittedly little) I know about Ye Olde Architecture, small, overcrowded spaces were far more normal than they are today. For many people, the size of a room was limited by how long your tree was. There's a regional park not too far from me that has a house built by a freed slave and his family. It's maybe 15 x 15 (I can't find the actual dimensions anywhere, and it's been ages since I've been in it, but it's tiny), and the upper floor is almost more crawl space than proper attic, and it housed an upwards of 15 people at one point. Sure, magic and higher building tech levels will make rooms bigger, but buildings are still going to be on the small size--smaller than what most modern people find comfortable.

I would also houserule that a stronghold could have extra rooms (and lean-tos, basements, attics, sheds, warehouses, and the like) that are attached to the stronghold but cost a lot less (maybe 5 silver a square foot, maybe even cheaper, adjusted for quality, no option for buying acres) and don't attract followers, no matter how fancy they are. Like having a house with an unfinished basement. I'd also say that this extra space can't be larger than, say, half the size of your stronghold's size. So if you have a stronghold that is 2,000 square feet, you could have to 1,000 square feet of extra space that you would probably use as storage, larders, rooms for the servants, secret passages, etc., and the actual stronghold is taken up by the the main room, your bedroom, your laboratory/chapel, etc.

 

[lichmaster]

The unit of length is irrelevant to it. centimetres, feet, yards, metres, miles, lightyears, parsecs. The metric system doesn’t change geometry.

Exactly: they are both measurements of area, whether you arrange that area as a square with 10ft edge (2x2 on a battlemap) or not.
The multiplier implies there's a person every 2x2. A 10ftx10ft room is maybe a small bedroom, if you fit one bed into it and maybe just a small locker there's very little space left. Besides, sqft and ft^2 is the same. The squaring is referred only to the unit of measure.

 

[Morrus]

, sqft and ft^2 is the same.

They’re not the same — 10 ft squared is 10x10=100 square feet, not 10 square feet.

 

[lichmaster]

Also, judging by what (admittedly little) I know about Ye Olde Architecture, small, overcrowded spaces were far more normal than they are today. For many people, the size of a room was limited by how long your tree was. There's a regional park not too far from me that has a house built by a freed slave and his family. It's maybe 15 x 15 (I can't find the actual dimensions anywhere, and it's been ages since I've been in it, but it's tiny), and the upper floor is almost more crawl space than proper attic, and it housed an upwards of 15 people at one point. Sure, magic and higher building tech levels will make rooms bigger, but buildings are still going to be on the small size--smaller than what most modern people find comfortable.

That perfectly makes sense for a poor, crowded building, of which I've seen many of different eras, from the ancient Greeks onwards.
Luxurious places, like Versailles but also roman villas, had way larger rooms. For sure there were personal vallets, guards, and company dames, but also many people working in other areas of the building: maintaining the gardens, cooking, tending to the animals, etc. That all makes sense for a luxurious palace. In a library there's probably no reason to have aa lot of staff that's not directly involved in the maintenance of books and parchments.

I understand this is a gaming simplification and abstraction, but it may benefit from some tweaking depending on the kind of building IMO

 

[lichmaster]

They’re not the same — 10 ft squared is 10x10=100 square feet, not 10 square feet.

You need to write (10ft)^2 in order to do that. If you write 10ft^2 you don't square the 10

 

[johna_thr33]

20 people working on an area 10ftx10ft

This isn’t the case. If you look at the map picture that was sent, it’s 20 servants in a ~45ft x ~45 ft area. One staff member per 10ft x 10ft area

 

[Faolyn]

That perfectly makes sense for a poor, crowded building, of which I've seen many of different eras, from the ancient Greeks onwards.
Luxurious places, like Versailles but also roman villas, had way larger rooms. For sure there were personal vallets, guards, and company dames, but also many people working in other areas of the building: maintaining the gardens, cooking, tending to the animals, etc. That all makes sense for a luxurious palace. In a library there's probably no reason to have aa lot of staff that's not directly involved in the maintenance of books and parchments.

I understand this is a gaming simplification and abstraction, but it may benefit from some tweaking depending on the kind of building IMO

Agreed. But that's why I'd allow for the extra space I mentioned. The library is where the books live. The extra space is where you have the workshop for repairing damaged books, storage for whatever it is libraries need to store, the break room, etc.

 

[Faolyn]

This isn’t the case. If you look at the map picture that was sent, it’s 20 servants in a ~45ft x ~45 ft area. One staff member per 10ft x 10ft area

Are we absolutely sure it was supposed to be one staff member per 10x10 square, and it wasn't misswritten and supposed to be one staff per 100x100 square?