Level Up (A5E) Strongholds and living expenses

[Sword of Spirit]

The only stronghold that says it covers your living expenses is the farm (and this one specifies it applies while you are in the same region, so it might extend to more than being able to crash at your own place and have food). I don’t see any other rules specifying that your stronghold supports your living expenses. However most strongholds do support staff (often a lot).

It seems like, at least once a certain grade is reached, your stronghold is supposed to be providing you living expenses (or at least it would be odd to have 600 staff but have to eat through your savings just to keep your own mouth fed and your own gear maintained) but I cant find a rule for it. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[King Brad]

I think that's by design. The Strongholds are assumed to be self sufficient for the people who work there, however, you (the owner) add to the expense so if you want to live whatever lifestyle, you still have to pay for it. A keep doesn't necessarily grow food, but a farm does.

That being said, you can just house rule that the living expenses go down X levels for every Y rank or just hand-wave it completely after a certain rank.

 

[Morrus]

Living expenses often include inns and the like when out adventuring. I think it’s reasonable to assume that when you’re staying at the stronghold, you get an equivalent lifestyle for free. But once you head out, you have to pay your way .

 

[Doskious]

Living expenses often include inns and the like when out adventuring. I think it’s reasonable to assume that when you’re staying at the stronghold, you get an equivalent lifestyle for free. But once you head out, you have to pay your way .

Or fill out one of those Bill Me Later cards...

I feel like in an era before easy access to instant communication, the large volume of historical figures (fictional or not) I've read about as

1. In possession of a castle, manor, farm, or other holding at which enough people are employed
2. Not at that location and in need of food or shelter
3. Either sufficiently well-known as the owner of (1) or possessed of a retinue that would be insulting to question

who run up excessive bills that come due months, or years later is fairly easily explained by said people sending their bills "to the castle".

I'm not asking for rules mechanics to support this, or anything, just saying that from an historical perspective it has struck me that in the absence of an ability to exchange value-tokens instantaneously (in unlimited quantity), banking on the possession of a stronghold of some significance for immediate credit was a fairly common practice.

On that basis, I would not view it askance to posit that most strongholds beyond a certain threshold ought to be able to cover lifestyle expenses up to a certain point, even while you're out on the road adventuring, in the absence of an explicit need to render immediate payment.

Also, having certain bills "come due" later on in the story presents some ... interesting opportunities for different kinds of storytelling that involves the stronghold directly.

 

[Morrus]

Or fill out one of those Bill Me Later cards...

I feel like in an era before easy access to instant communication, the large volume of historical figures (fictional or not) I've read about as

1. In possession of a castle, manor, farm, or other holding at which enough people are employed
2. Not at that location and in need of food or shelter
3. Either sufficiently well-known as the owner of (1) or possessed of a retinue that would be insulting to question

who run up excessive bills that come due months, or years later is fairly easily explained by said people sending their bills "to the castle".

I'm not asking for rules mechanics to support this, or anything, just saying that from an historical perspective it has struck me that in the absence of an ability to exchange value-tokens instantaneously (in unlimited quantity), banking on the possession of a stronghold of some significance for immediate credit was a fairly common practice.

On that basis, I would not view it askance to posit that most strongholds beyond a certain threshold ought to be able to cover lifestyle expenses up to a certain point, even while you're out on the road adventuring, in the absence of an explicit need to render immediate payment.

Also, having certain bills "come due" later on in the story presents some ... interesting opportunities for different kinds of storytelling that involves the stronghold directly.

Sounds like a job for the Prestige mechanic.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

And now that I've started thinking about that, I've started thinking about the other side of it. While some strongholds make sense that they are self-supporting, for others they don't seem like they would inherently be able to even support their staff without some additional investment.

Take your typical house for instance. Spending the cash to buy a halfling shire house doesn't give you the inherited wealth you need to keep your larder filled and pay a gardener.

Farms make sense. Shops and Taverns breaking even without the Income addition make sense. But many of the other ones are more difficult to justify. In most cases you can think up some sort of way they could be self-supporting, but it is not obvious that the owner necessarily would want them to be. So you could rent use of your library, or rent rooms in your home when you're traveling. But many people who have libraries and homes wouldn't really want to do that.

So I'm not sure what to do about that complication, lol. I do like the system in general, but I'm going to need to have some sort of adjustments to it to handle this sort of thing for my suspension of disbelief threshold.

 

[Doskious]

Sounds like a job for the Prestige mechanic.

The two do rather go hand-in-hand, but from my reading, Prestige is presented as primarily focused on mechanics, from the player's perspective, designed to get something special that would be abnormal but not impossible for them to obtain... relative to their current Prestige.

Billing your traveling expenses back to your Stage-4 Stronghold in low-Tier regions (the likes of which I intended to anecdotally describe in my previous comment) struck me as something that, historically, was the norm (for people with Strongholds and, yes, Prestige), which is why it didn't jump out to me that it would be a valid use of the Prestige mechanics.

Then again, while there's nothing in the rules that explicitly identifies it, this is the kind of thing I'll probably rule at my table as being obtainable under the concept of "Passive Prestige" -- things that, in the party's past, would have required a Prestige check because they were, at that (lower-Prestige-rating) time, things that were special and abnormal but not impossible to obtain, but as a result of the increases to their Prestige, are no longer appropriately categorized in that fashion.

Take your typical house for instance. Spending the cash to buy a halfling shire house doesn't give you the inherited wealth you need to keep your larder filled and pay a gardener.

Well, no, but specifically the Halfling Shire House (Average quality, which I personally equate to a Moderate lifestyle) is underground, but such shire homes are described in the Culture segments as being just underground, meaning that the house also has potentially useful land on top of it. Under the conceit that (unless otherwise needed for narrative purposes) the homeowner has secured competent staff, who are able to make use of the whole stronghold to good effect, I don't find it unlikely that a staff of three (Gardener, Cook, Housekeeper) would be able to make arrangements for the stronghold to support an additional 1.5 gp per day cost (at least while the owner was in residence) above the ability to support the three of them properly (if that was called for, even -- maybe they're not live-in, and the maintenance costs are low because in the grand scheme of things the staff's needs are being met as a result of their pooling of resources with their families or something).

The "House" strongholds, and the smallest "Castle" strongholds, are the only ones that seem to me to present this kind of an obstacle to sustaining themselves; all of the other strongholds have fairly obvious mechanisms for revenue generation, as I see it.

The "how" of each instance where such an answer is needed is part of the narrative-crafting experience, in my view. Some groups would find that kind of content unnecessary; others will find it fascinating. I feel like there's enough in the core rules to provide a solid foundation without being more complex than it needs to be for the majority of the target audience.