Inn income

[Maitre Du Donjon]

Hello all, let me get right to the point. In the next campaign i'm planning, one of the players will somewhat be running an inn. I was wondering if anyone had any idea on how much income an inn could produce (per week / per month)

The inn is located in a big city, near the very active port. It is a medium-size inn, and the profits will surely be used to finance magic item creation (especially potions, not that it matters).

Any info any of you might have will be appreciated, be it personal game experience, or rules someone might have cooked up for a similar situation.

Maitre D

 

[Mouseferatu]

In my last campaign, the PCs bought an inn and hired the former owner to manage it for them.

I didn't want to bother figuring out what their income vs. costs were, or how much they could spend per month, or any of that. The tavern was meant to be a sideline while they were out doing the adventuring thing.

So rather than bookkeeping, we just settled on this. The inn made exactly as much money per month as they spent on cost of living, food, feed, basic non-magical equipment, new horses, ammunition, spell components...

Basically, the inn just wiped out the need for them to ever actually keep track of how much money they spent (except on really expensive items such as magic stuff), and we went on from there.

Realistic? Not in the slightest. But it certainly streamlined everything and kept the game going, while still allowing them to gain some benefit from it.

Edit: fixed typo

 

[Oni]

mouseferatu, that is a great idea.

 

[Tonguez]

Income DC = Income/Divided labout/Time

eg the PC says he wants a 2000gp Income this year. He hires 10 staff and allows 12 months

2000/10/12 = DC 16 + modifiers (eg Raids on the Trade Routes have caused a +4 DC)

The PC checks their Prof: Innkeeper skill vs DC 20

+25 50% increase
+20 25%
+15 2d10% increase
+10 1d10% increase
+ 5 1d4+1% increase in Income
DC = gains projected Income
-5 1d4+1% descrease in Income
-10 1d10% decrease
-15 2d10% decrease
-20 25%
- 25 50% decrease

 

[David Argall]

start with desires

We need to start with what this inn is to do. As already suggested, it can be just a way to avoid bookkeeping. But we have other alternatives too.
Does the player just want a more mundane game? Not too hard to whip up a quickie beer and barmaids game.
Wants income? The more he wants, the more risk. [Note that is a problem of the above system. There is no way to lose money on it.]
Want an adventure excuse? You need a set of tax collectors, protection agents, etc to endanger the place.
Or...

 

[Frostmarrow]

From the SRD:

(*)Profession (WIS; TRAINED ONLY)

The character is trained in a livelihood or a professional role, such as apothecary, boater, bookkeeper, brewer, cook, driver, farmer, fisher, guide, herbalist, herdsman, innkeeper, lumberjack, miller, miner, porter, rancher, sailor, scribe, siege engineer, stablehand, tanner, teamster, woodcutter, and so forth.

Like Craft, Profession is actually a number of separate skills. The character could have several Profession skills, each with its own ranks, each purchased as a separate skill.

While a Craft skill represents skill in creating or making an item, a Profession skill represents an aptitude in a vocation requiring a broader range of less specific knowledge. To draw a modern analogy, if an occupation is a service industry, it's probably a Profession skill. If it's in the manufacturing sector, it's probably a Craft skill.

Check: The character can practice a trade and make a decent living, earning about half the check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. The character knows how to use the tools of the trade, how to perform the profession's daily tasks, how to supervise untrained helpers, and how to handle common problems. For example, a sailor knows how to tie several basic knots, how to tend and repair sails, and how to stand a deck watch at sea. The DM sets DCs for specialized tasks.

Retry: An attempt to use a Profession skill to earn an income cannot be retried. The character is stuck with whatever weekly wage the check result brought the character. (Another check may be made after a week to determine a new income for the next period of time.) An attempt to accomplish some specific task can usually be retried.

Special: Untrained laborers and assistants earn an average of 1 silver piece per day.

I guess this means that an innkeeper can take 10 on his check and then multiply the result by 48* and then divide the result by two. (* 48 is the number of weeks in a year in the world of Greyhawk.) The result is the number of gold pieces earned.

I.e. Ben Mayflower has a Profession (Innkeeper) of 6. 16 times 48 divided by two is 384. Ben makes 384 gold pieces this year, in all.

If this year is especially lean, that is a draught have made the crops fail to some extent the DM decides to lower Ben's check score by 2. 14 times 24 is 336 gold pieces.

The money is payed to Ben on a weekly basis. Which makes for a weekly income of 7 gp. 1 gp per day's work.

If a PC owns Ben's inn the PC has Ben pay rent for the use of the facilities. I guess Ben can afford to pay 10-20% of what he earns to the PC. The PC comes to collect once per month. In a month Ben makes 7*4=28 gp (In Greyhawk a month is exactly four weeks). Ben pays the PC somewhere between 2.8-5.6 gp. (Depending on how tight-fisted the PC is.)

If the PC wants to make more money he can commisson one or more serving wenches and have them pay for the opportunity to make money (from tips) in the PC's inn. The wenches make a 1 sp per day as untrained labour. Thus, will earn the PC some 3 sp per month each.

This might not sound as a lot of money but if you can make 5 gp a month without working for it (8-12 hours per day) makes for a pretty good deal, imho. It's just a question of time before a PC sets up a chain of inns and starts making hundreds or even thousands of gold per month.

 

[Drawmack]

I like the porfession check method, but I would probably do it like this.

# room * # days in moth * rate for room

#patrons possible *cost of an ale * 3 * days in month

#patrons possible * cost of a meal * days in month

Add all these together multiply by 0.2.

This is how much money the PC makes. This way if he upgrades the inn he makes more and I think it's safe to assume the inn is always full cause it's on a busy trade route. It's a bit of set up work but once it's set up it's a flat rate per month.

Assumptions: Rooms are always full, bar is always full, patrons on average eat a meal and drink 3 ales.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Don't forget to include cost of repairs, this is an active port and it is owned by PCs, which means that each time the party goes to the inn there will be a fight!

It is also going to have to be based on the alignment of the owner. One of my players had his a front, using it to smuggle goods into the city. Profits were high but business was so so.

I used a simple d20 roll, break even point was 125 gold/month
9 or less lost money minus 4d10 gold/month
10-12 break even
13-15 minor profit additional 2d10 gold/month
15-18 good profit additional 3d10 gold/month
19-20 very good profit additional 4d10 gold/month

I don't remember where we go the 125 (if it was that)

 

[Frostmarrow]

A grand house costs 5,000 gp to buy. A grand house is according to the SRD: "...(a) four- to ten-room room grand house is made of wood and has a thatched roof." A grand house should be pretty well suited to serve as an inn.

5,000 gp is quite a large sum of money by any standards. If an innkeeper can earn 384 gp per year and is fully trained and wiser than his peers. (4 ranks and a +2 wis bonus, see above post.) Then the innkeeper can buy his own inn if he works every day and don't spend any of his earnings after about 13 years. Maybe the innkeeper spends some of his savings but then again he might also become better at his vocation and thus make more money.

Giving 13 years of your life to become the owner of a grand house in a medieval setting doesn't strike me as an impossible task. Of course if he has to pay 20% of his earnings to the owner of the inn where he works he'll have to work for 16 years before he can become his own.

Naturally it's impossible to save all your money in order to buy an inn sometime in the future but I imagine that you would make lesser investments in the meantime. You might buy a horse or a wagon for example. Which in turn can be used to make more money.

In fact the innkeeper can afford to buy a simple house: "Simple House: This one- to three-room house is made of wood and has a thatched roof." for 1,000 gp. a building suited for "poor" accomodation somewhere on the King's Road or perhaps a "good" bed and breakfast style house. It would only take an innkeeper 3.5 years to be able to buy such an inn.

If the innkeeper choses this business route he will be able to buy his own grand house after he's been in his own employ at the simple house for another 10-11 years.

When the innkeeper owns his own grand house he can retire if he wants to and live off the money a younger innkeeper earns him; some 5 gp per month. Every morning he gets up and rolls an aid another check vs DC 10. If successful the younger innkeeper gets a +2 bonus to his roll...

 

[Frostmarrow]

I was just thinking that if a PC wants to have an inn that someone else runs while he is away adventuring, a lazy DM might do something like this:

Invent a skill called Profession (Entrepreneur). Each week you make a check and divide the roll by 2.The result is the character's income in gold this week. The money comes from the character's investments.

Special: The character must have a fortune worth 100 gp per rank in order to make this roll. I.e. if the character loses his wealth save 100 gp he can still make this weekly check but can only take advantage of up to one rank.

5 ranks of Profession (Innkeeper) might grant a +2 synergy bonus to the entrepreneur-check (DM discretion).

A feat; True Entrepreneur would give the character a +2 (or +3, same as Skill Focus) bonus to this check.

Naturally this skill does a poor job representing the actual worth of the character's investments but if you can make gold without looting dungeons why would anyone bother to risk their lives? It still represents a characters ability to make money off of wise investment at the cost of a skillpoint per rank (time spent thinking about the business).

It's also pretty balanced as any character with a profession can make equal amounts of money. The advantage of this skill is that it works even if the character is occupied elsewhere. On the other hand the equipment needed to use it is more expensive (the 100 gp per rank investments) than any other profession's.