Lifestyle Expenses in Actual Play

[iserith]

Emphasis mine. Not always. The more exotic the lifestyle, the more likely you are to get things that the poor peasants never will. Bad teeth from too much sugar, bad liver from too much wine, etc. Depending on time and place, the peasants had a much healthier lifestyle than the aristo-cats.

I don't think it's necessary to get that granular with it. More food and less dead rats for pillows I think is an easy enough abstraction to explain why there are benefits to spending more gold on a better lifestyle.

 

[Nevvur]

In my games, Adventurers are made of different stuff than the normies, transcending the physical benefits or drawbacks of a population within a social class, such as improved vigor or vulnerability to disease. As for social advantages or penalties, I'd rather just handle it on a case-by-case basis.

To me, it feels like one of those areas where additional structure will constrain game play rather than support it. Living a squalid lifestyle, for instance, should not impose social penalties when interacting with other squalid lifestyle NPCs. Background elements matter, too. An urchin paying for a comfortable lifestyle could be seen as forgetting where she came from, and a noble living a comfortable lifestyle could be seen as slumming it by his peers. How about character aptitudes? Is a druid who has never paid a penny for food or shelter in his life, sleeps in the woods, and has a pleasant earthy aroma about him, is this druid truly a wretch? Trying to capture all these parameters in a system that is consistent with 5e's design philosophy seems untenable to me.

That doesn't mean you can't or shouldn't respond to social cues based on PC lifestyles, I just think you'll be better off keeping it loose rather than codifying the effects of their choices.

 

[Syntallah]

Thanks for all the replies, gang! The insight is much appreciated.