Do Maintenance Costs include Lifestyle Expenses?

[Hatox]

My party had a lot of downtime recently, and most of them lived in a modest lifestyle (1GP/day) during that time. But while they were resting they also had someone build them a fort.

Now that the fort will be finished soon they asked me if the costs in the future will only be the 50GP/day (divided by 5 players) for the maintenance costs of the fort, or if it will be 10GP+lifestyle costs for each one of them.

What would you say, does the maintenance reduce/include lifestyle expenses or is it simply put on top of it?

 

[Rya.Reisender]

Hmm...

(Lifestyle expenses) cover your accommodations, food and drink, and all your other necessities. Furthermore, expenses cover the cost of maintaining your equipment so you can be ready when adventure next calls.

There are notes in the PHB that you won't have to spent lifestyle expenses if you don't need any of the above, for example, if you live in the wild, hunt for food and take care of your equipment yourself.

I can also find notes that for example if you pay the expenses for crafting, your lifestyle expenses are already included in the cost.

Can't find anything on maintenance costs, though.

The fort would definitely offer you accommodations, so it's reasonable that the lifestyle expenses are at least lower than usual. You could say they only need to pay the food part of the expenses. For a modest lifestyle that would be 3SP per day. But that's so low that you might just want to handwave it.

 

[aco175]

I would think to still charge the 1gp/day even though they have a fort for shelter. Eventually the fort will need a new roof or repair the door or something that the inn owner would pay for on his building. The cost is now built into the lifestyle cost. An upkeep cost of the fort covers taxes and such. I could also see where the inn owner has profit built into the 1gp/day and owning the fort may reduce it. This can wash out with the cost of hiring a few people that run the fort in the PCs absence and do the chores like get wood and cook.

Either way I do not think my group would get too involved into this and just kind of wash things over and call it one or the other.