House buying through the Stronghold Builder's Guide

[S'mon]

Why didn't you use these numbers as a guide?

Well, you have to pretty much divide those figures by 10 to get something that makes sense _in terms of the rest of the prices in the D&D game_ - for magic items, wages etc. Maybe a castle is more than 50,000gp, but 500,000gp is ridiculous for anything but the hugest royal castles.

 

[S'mon]

I take this back - although I still have concerns about the incentive for castle building given the costs.

www.castles-of-britian.com is a very interesting site with some cost figures. Assuming 1 sp/day for common laborer, the largest of castles is nearly 500,000 gp.

Yes - if I'm Edward I, maybe I'll pay 500,000 (D&D) gp for Caernarvon Castle (presumably with defenses against magic in a D&D setting - gorgonsblood mortar, anti-scrying rooms & such) , but no way a typical baron is paying that kind of sum for his castle, 50,000gp is more reasonable.

 

[Psion]

Well, you have to pretty much divide those figures by 10 to get something that makes sense _in terms of the rest of the prices in the D&D game_ - for magic items, wages etc. Maybe a castle is more than 50,000gp, but 500,000gp is ridiculous for anything but the hugest royal castles.

Yup.

Y'see, the problem here is that the D&D game -- and it's players -- assume far too liquid an economy. Remember, there is no widely available fast, reliable transportation. No Wal-Mart. No UPS. Getting something from somewhere else is very costly. There would be no fixed menu of prices.

Personally, I don't even let players pay cash for magic items... the economy simply won't absorb that much money. I see the cost of pricey magic items as exchange value only.

I guess you could assume those numbers are accurate if you were forced to pay in cash. If the players wanted to build a nice house, and the rich PCs offered some local commoners money to build a house to their specifications from scratch, depending on the environment, an instant boomtown economy might result as every about town starts raising their expectations of prices when the influx of cash begins, in place of the more mundane barter economy that the commoners may have been subsisting on.

But if the players build a rapport with commoners, do favors for them with the assumption it would be repaid in labor, you might see one tenth -- or lower -- the equivalent GP cost.

 

[S'mon]

Yup.

Y'see, the problem here is that the D&D game -- and it's players -- assume far too liquid an economy. Remember, there is no widely available fast, reliable transportation. No Wal-Mart. No UPS. Getting something from somewhere else is very costly. There would be no fixed menu of prices.

My campaign falls in-between the "Wal-Mart" and "no buying magic" approaches. I assume PCs are part of the same economy as rich NPCs - I use the NPC wealth-by-level table for both NPCs & starting PCs (modified at low levels - 2nd level 300 gp, 3rd 900 gp, 4th 1800 gp, 5th 3600 gp). I use the PC Wealth-by-level table only as a guideline to the maximum wealth a PC should have at a particular level. PCs can buy a few things like cure light wounds potions off-the-rack, but mostly if they want magic items they need to commission someone to make them. In a large city most items up to 3,000gp value can usually be commissioned, depending on the prereqs - it's usually easier to commission an 18,000gp +3 Sword (9th level caster) than a 2,000gp Ring of Jumping (12th level caster). Items worth over 10,000gp are hard to find and may involve a x2 or x4 mark-up if the crafter is reluctant. Items over 100,000gp are usually unavailable at any price. In all cases the PC has to wait while the item is crafted - for a +5 sword that's 50 days.

 

[S'mon]

As far as cash in the D&D economy goes, I tend to assume most of it is abstract, merely representing acual goods & services, except when PCs are coming into town with piles of the stuff. Maybe the kingdom rakes in 1 million gp of taxes a month, but there are probably nothing like 1 million physical gold pieces in circulation in the kingdom. I do treat it more like Roman-era than medieval era though, ie coins are widely used and there is a cash economy in civilised parts. Since D&D devalues gold, I have 1 gold piece, weighing 1/100 lb, be worth roughly what a silver denarii was worth in ancient Rome. IMC a typical professional soldier's gross wage is 12gp/month (cavalry 18gp), though 80% of that usually goes on mandatory expenses (accommodation, food, equipment etc).

 

[gizmo33]

Yes - if I'm Edward I, maybe I'll pay 500,000 (D&D) gp for Caernarvon Castle (presumably with defenses against magic in a D&D setting - gorgonsblood mortar, anti-scrying rooms & such) , but no way a typical baron is paying that kind of sum for his castle, 50,000gp is more reasonable.

Yea, I agree - from the tone of the site, Edward was building at the height of castle construction in England. In a fantasy campaign that seems permanently locked at a medieval tech level, I would think that there would be a slightly greater proportion of such castles (and that they'd be finished, unlike in RL)

Consider the degree to which RL castle builders went to protect themselves against fire, sapping, etc. If they're going to that much trouble for those things, then in a world with magic I would think they would take whatever precautions necessary to protect against the most threatening spells. IMC I rule that simple lead shielding prevents scrying (extrapolating from the clairvoyance spell).

So if gorgonsblood mortar is deemed useful, I would think it would be a standard part of the larger castles. The cost could be offset by the use of magic in building the castle. That way the baron gets his rather modest castle for 50,000 gp but it includes the magic protections you mention so it's actually worth paying 50,000 gp for.

 

[S'mon]

So if gorgonsblood mortar is deemed useful, I would think it would be a standard part of the larger castles. The cost could be offset by the use of magic in building the castle. That way the baron gets his rather modest castle for 50,000 gp but it includes the magic protections you mention so it's actually worth paying 50,000 gp for.

Yep, that's my approach - IMC likewise lead prevents scrying, so internal rooms of a simple 50,000gp castle will be routinely lead-shielded (they probably have lead plumbing too - handy stuff, lead - pity about the toxicity). A 500,00gp castle will have gorgonsblood mortar preventing ethereal access, anti-teleport shielding (except possibly for a secure teleport chamber), anti-magic rooms (eg the dungeon!), and defenses against all the most common attack methods - some may even antimagic the entire outer defenses. Outer walls, if not antimagicked, will have Spell Resistance to protect against Passwall, Rock to Mud etc.

 

[ragboy]

You should probably also consider the politics of your campaign. In a true vassal society, successive lords were stewards of land parcels all the way up to the monarch, who owned everything, and land was rarely sold or transferred, except by war. So, the 'cost' of land/house, etc was smooching the monarch's butt enough to get him to name you Lord of the Rolling Land of Virgins, or whatever. The flip-side of this with the PC's in the mix is that the lord/monarch could also _take_ their house any time they don't sufficiently pucker up to this demands.

If you're not playing in a feudal system, there still might be political ramifications for 'owning' land.

I'm reminded of this exchange in the Lion in Winter...

Henry II: The Vexin's mine.
Philip II: By what authority?
Henry II: It's got my troops all over it; that makes it mine.

 

[S'mon]

The flip-side of this with the PC's in the mix is that the lord/monarch could also _take_ their house any time they don't sufficiently pucker up to this demands.
.

That would be legally true in medieval England, but for ancient landholdings, not in eg medieval France where some land-rights predated the monarchy - the lord can only legally take back what he or his ancestors granted; in England William the Conqueror claimed to own the whole country by right of conquest but that was unusual.

 

[jmucchiello]

The problem that I have with those numbers is that 500,000 gp seems an awful lot for a castle compared to the wages for soldiers that I've seen. I could never convince the players in my campaign to build a castle based on those prices when it would seem cheaper to hire an army and equip them all with magic items.

IMO for castle technology to make sense, it has to be competitive with the prices for other kinds of defense. As someone pointed out earlier, it doesn't make any sense if the price of a castle is more than the price of making a Daern's Instant Fortress. It would seem to me that 500,000 invested in paying soldiers would have far greater benefit.

Daern's Fortress does not hold a tenth the number of people a full sized castle holds. And I would think peasents would be leary of helping a lord who could pack up his castle and leave.

As for investing the money in your soldiers. Sure, with 500,000 gp you could outfit a force of 250 men with +1 swords. That is not an army. That is one division of men. And those men have their heads handed to them by a force of 10,000 men. Personally, I'd rather have the large building and larger number of men.

If you really want to fix the pricing problems in D&D, division is not the answer. Square roots (and logarithms) are. But that is not the topic of this thread.