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Cicciograna
2009-09-25, 11:27 AM
Say that your party just cleaned an abandoned tower, occupies it and receives from the local government the rights to run it; later in the game, the players want to expand, so they decide to purchase nearby lands from the government (or the private owners, it doesn't matter): how much should the terrains cost? Which factors should I keep in mind estimating the price? Is there any sourcebook to which reference?

Ostien
2009-09-25, 11:29 AM
I think the Stronghold Builders guide might help with that. But really it might come to a lot of homebrew for the 'other' factors.

ericgrau
2009-09-25, 11:34 AM
Here's buildings:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#buyingBuildings

Land out in the open (not inside city walls) is relatively cheap. I'd guess a few hundred gp per acre, or a tiny fraction of that amount for poor, unusable locations. If they're gonna build something on it, I wouldn't even worry about the cost of the land and just deduct the cost of buildings. If they want tons of open farmland, then you'll have to do some estimating. Land inside city walls is probably included in the costs of the smaller buildings, but you could make it a significant additional cost (relative to the building cost) for truly prime locations.

Cicciograna
2009-09-25, 11:35 AM
I think the Stronghold Builders guide might help with that. But really it might come to a lot of homebrew for the 'other' factors.
No, SBG doesn't contain effective land prices (I know because I own it: I should have mentioned that I already checked it).

jiriku
2009-09-25, 11:51 AM
Basically, it costs as much as you want it to in order to deplete character wealth/place it just out of reach for a level or two. Whatever works for the campaign. You simply need to provide exaplanatory fluff to make the cost seem reasonable (this is cheap because the land is infested with werewolves, this is expensive because another noble is also interested in the land and is bidding up the price).

Kyeudo
2009-09-25, 12:08 PM
Make it inversely proportional to the amount of work the PCs would need to do cleaning out marauding bads of goblins/trolls/dragons to make it usable.

taltamir
2009-09-25, 01:55 PM
what is your level, and why haven't you taken over the kingdom yet :)

anyways, the land around you has to be owned by SOMEONE... probably not the government... unless its wilderness. I think a quest is more in order (Do something for the king) than simply purchasing.

kwanzaabot
2009-09-25, 06:20 PM
The rights to run it?

Who's gonna stop you? I say extort the government into paying you for the right to exist on your land. If they object, a little conquering should shut them up. :smallamused:

Solaris
2009-09-25, 06:29 PM
Here's buildings:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#buyingBuildings

Land out in the open (not inside city walls) is relatively cheap. I'd guess a few hundred gp per acre, or a tiny fraction of that amount for poor, unusable locations. If they're gonna build something on it, I wouldn't even worry about the cost of the land and just deduct the cost of buildings. If they want tons of open farmland, then you'll have to do some estimating. Land inside city walls is probably included in the costs of the smaller buildings, but you could make it a significant additional cost (relative to the building cost) for truly prime locations.

I'd say a few ten gold per acre, if that for decent farmland and a point-and-laugh for unusable locations. You gotta remember that a gold coin is big money. Most commoners only make a silver for working dawn to dusk, and that's just barely enough for them and their families to live on. There simply isn't an economy to support huge prices like that out in the hinterlands where you'd find towers that need clearing.
That, of course, assumes the typical feudalistic Iron Age setting. If you're running a Rennaissance-Industrial Revolution setting like I am, then prices scale upwards accordingly as you get people working in factories and getting paid significantly better wages with more spare time in their day. Similarly, the closer to civilization you are, the more expensive land's gonna be.

Quietus
2009-09-25, 06:30 PM
As a random thing, I'd probably say that if you take the price of a standard small house, 5,000 GP, then you could easily apply that and call it the base price for the amount of farmland one family could reasonably care for. Alter the price as necessary for particularly fertile/unfertile/valuable land, and for the presence of monsters.

taltamir
2009-09-25, 07:24 PM
As a random thing, I'd probably say that if you take the price of a standard small house, 5,000 GP, then you could easily apply that and call it the base price for the amount of farmland one family could reasonably care for. Alter the price as necessary for particularly fertile/unfertile/valuable land, and for the presence of monsters.

if a house costs 5000gp that nobody has houses in DnD.
what is typical pay again.. 2 copper a day or something?

the thing about DnD is that the economy does not work, period! you can't really "salvage" it ... you want an economy, you have to write one from scratch, and I guarantee you will do a better job than WOTC

The Dark Fiddler
2009-09-25, 07:30 PM
what is typical pay again.. 2 copper a day or something?


That doesn't seem right. Isn't the pay for Profession skills equal to your skill check in GP per week?

So your average roll with no modifiers gets you 10 GP a week, more than 1 GP a day.

I'll need to check though, I could be wrong.

Edit: I was wrong, it's half your check, but the point still stands. More than 2 CP a day, 5 a week with no modifiers (and what idiot would be in a Profession without skill ranks, and maybe Skill Focus. Add in a possible ability bonus, and one should be able to regularly get 14 on average, 1 GP a day.)

Johel
2009-09-25, 07:43 PM
The rights to run it?

Who's gonna stop you? I say extort the government into paying you for the right to exist on your land. If they object, a little conquering should shut them up. :smallamused:

Because everybody isn't evil ? :smallbiggrin:

More seriously, do you want to own the land or rule it ?
To rule it would only need to become nobles, which should be easy if you're already famous and running what's basically a military infrastructure. The local governement won't mind to have a few powerful people fighting for an hereditary right rather than for mere gold.
To own it... Well, if it's middle age, land belong to a lord, who will rarely sell it. He might lease it or simply allow you to build in exchange for taxes. But he won't sell unless he really need your gold.

This being said, here's a few question :
What are the lands currently used for ?
What's the local demography like ?
Is there any valuable natural ressources around ?

If it's agriculture lands, then ask the DM how much people these land can feed if cultivated correctly. Then multiply this number by 100 years. And then by 365, then by the price of a low-rate meal.
Increase price based on the presence of valuable ressource.
Decrease price if it's mainly wilderness.

taltamir
2009-09-25, 07:48 PM
That doesn't seem right. Isn't the pay for Profession skills equal to your skill check in GP per week?

So your average roll with no modifiers gets you 10 GP a week, more than 1 GP a day.

I'll need to check though, I could be wrong.

Edit: I was wrong, it's half your check, but the point still stands. More than 2 CP a day, 5 a week with no modifiers (and what idiot would be in a Profession without skill ranks, and maybe Skill Focus. Add in a possible ability bonus, and one should be able to regularly get 14 on average, 1 GP a day.)

thats for using profession skill if you are a PC, there is another line that says how much commons make... Even then, it is still 5000 days of work, assuming you kept every gp and not spent any on food or lodging

The Dark Fiddler
2009-09-25, 07:55 PM
thats for using profession skill if you are a PC, there is another line that says how much commons make... Even then, it is still 5000 days of work, assuming you kept every gp and not spent any on food or lodging

I don't see anything in the entry for the skill saying NPCs make any less than PCs do. The only thing I see is it saying that an untrained check (0 ranks, which as I said before is only for idiots) makes roughly 1 SP a week.

True, you're still spending money on food, but it's far from 1 CP a day.

Granted, I'm reading the SRD, so I might be missing it, but still.

taltamir
2009-09-25, 08:12 PM
P139 of the DMG:
Coinage
The economic system in the D&D game is based on the silver
piece (sp). A common laborer earns 1 sp a day. That’s just enough
to allow his family to survive, assuming that this income is sup-
plemented with food his family grows to eat, homemade clothing,
and a reliance on self-sufficiency for most tasks (personal groom-
ing, health, animal tending, and so on).

In your campaign, however, the PCs will deal primarily with
gold pieces. The gold piece (gp) is a larger, more substantial unit of
currency. The main reason why PCs typically receive and spend
gold pieces is that, as adventurers, they take much larger risks
than common folk and earn much larger rewards if they survive.

Many of the people with whom adventurers interact also deal
primarily in gold. Weaponsmiths, armorsmiths, and spellcasters all
make more money (sometimes far more money) than common
people. Spellcasters willing to make magic items or cast spells for
hire can make a lot of money, although expenditures of personal
power (experience points) are often involved, and the demand for
such expensive items is unsteady at best and can be depended on
only in large cities. Nobles with whom the PCs might interact also deal mostly in gold, since they purchase whole ships and buildings
and finance caravans and even armies using such currency.

Some economies have other forms of currency, such as trade
bars or letters of credit representing various amounts of gold that
are backed by powerful governments, guilds, or other organiza-
tions to insure their worth. Some economies even use coins of dif-
ferent metals: electrum, iron, or even tin. In some lands, it’s even
permissible to cut a gold coin in half to make a separate unit of
currency out of a half gold piece

The average weaponsmith DOES make gold pieces per week, by using his craft (arms and armor) skill... but the vast majority of the populace (as described in the common class section) are unskilled laborers making 1 sp a day. which cannot even fully feed their family without them making their own clothes and growing their own food, etc.

The Dark Fiddler
2009-09-25, 08:14 PM
That... that's stupid. :smallannoyed:

As a DM, I'd rule that no, people make money based on their Profession check (I guess you could assume they take 10).

taltamir
2009-09-25, 08:15 PM
That... that's stupid. :smallannoyed:

As a DM, I'd rule that no, people make money based on their Profession check (I guess you could assume they take 10).

it stems from a medieval economy... the vast majority of people are farmers, very few have REAL professions.
There are only so many weaponsmiths, wizards, horse breeders, etc that a town will support. of course, such a society is utterly impossible when you combine their level of technology found sporadically... there is no reason why you can have advanced "alchemy" and "magic" and items that provide infinite food... so instead of 90+% farmers, all food should be made by magic while people work in the service and production industry, aka, rapid economical development.

it is stupid. from the description the 1sp a day is... what, less than our minimum wage? lets say 2$ an hour... work 10 hours a day, make 20$ a day... 20$ = 2sp than... 5000gp = 500,000... so a typical house is 5 million dollars... in the poorer african / asian nations where people make 20$ a day. Who knows how much it costs in the top tier nations...

Cieyrin
2009-09-25, 08:33 PM
I don't see anything in the entry for the skill saying NPCs make any less than PCs do. The only thing I see is it saying that an untrained check (0 ranks, which as I said before is only for idiots) makes roughly 1 SP a week.

True, you're still spending money on food, but it's far from 1 CP a day.

Granted, I'm reading the SRD, so I might be missing it, but still.

I looked at the Profession skill in my PHB and I don't see a difference between whether the user is a PC or NPC. Given NPCs are more likely to have a Profession or Craft, I don't see why they should be gimped or why PCs should necessarily be that much better at it than the NPCs that do it to live in general. As said, given Profession is Trained only, at the minimum a character would earn 11 gold per week or about 1 gold 5 silver per day.

Also consider that many commoners and such probably built their own homes with the help of their neighbors and that many of them have had their homes for generations. Yes, no commoner probably built their own home by themselves but 3-10 commoners could build a house in a reasonable amount of time, acquiring the resources from the area (cutting down trees, digging up clay, etc.) and refine them to be useful. A house may be worth 5000 gp or whatever but that's not just materials, that's also time.

Them's my 2 coppers. Take as you will.

Bogardan_Mage
2009-09-26, 02:42 AM
That... that's stupid. :smallannoyed:

As a DM, I'd rule that no, people make money based on their Profession check (I guess you could assume they take 10).
Yeah, they do make money based on their Profession checks. People with no ranks in Profession get 1sp a day, and make up a significant proportion of the peasant population (remember it is a pseudo-medieval setting, most commoners are unskilled). Even with ranks in Profession (recall also that the average person is nowhere near as high a level as the average PC, so they can't get their Profession skill all that high) they still earn substantially less than adventurers who go out and kill treasure-guarding monsters on a regular basis.

Aux-Ash
2009-09-26, 03:27 AM
Like others have been saying, the price of land should vary depending on what kind of society it is. Is it a feudal society, or is it something "semi-modern" wrapped in a medieval disguise (like sword and sorcery tends to be)? The difference between the two are vast and they don't really look anything remotely like one another.

In feudal societies the land is owned by the nobles (who are under the obligation to care for and protect this land, in return they get to rule it), each noble is responsible for an area with the size varying depending on his rank. The king owns the country, but it is divided into duchies with is controlled by the dukes. The dukes have their territories divided into counties, each controlled by a count. The counties are divided into baronies each ruled by a baron and so forth. Each and every one of these nobles will have their own fief in which they rule.

Technically, all you'd have to do to own some lands is to convince the noble in charge of that territory to give it to you as your fief. If it is unclaimed land you can either contact the local king and ask that he awards it to you (with you swearing fealty to him) or proclaim yourself the king over the area (your neighbouring kings and nobles might disagree though).

Now, in a fedual society money is really only used in the cities (and even then. Homes doesn't cost anything, goods do however). Land doesn't cost anything in itself, you can make an arrangement with your landlord to pay for it but it's not the default. Most peasants (serfs) of course doesn't, instead they are under obligation to spend a certain number of days (decided by the noble) to work for the landlord (working his fields, building roads, clearing land, cutting down wood, fishing, maintaining bridges and buildings... fun stuff like that)

I should perhaps mention that some nobles, particulary the ones living a bit extravagantely, would probably be willing to lease some of their fiefs to the one willing to pay what they need to maintain their current lifestyle. But apart from that virtually the entire economy uses "a days work" or "food for a day" to pay for services.

Now... if the world is more of the semi-modern magical places much modern fantasy depicts. Then I think the modern world, with some adaptations, is a more proper model for what things would cost.

Johel
2009-09-26, 04:25 AM
That... that's stupid. :smallannoyed:

As a DM, I'd rule that no, people make money based on their Profession check (I guess you could assume they take 10).

No problem. You just have to increase all prices now because :
There's still the same amount of work capacity
There's still the same amount of material goods
There's just much more money in the economy.

So, you can pump as much coins as you want to "increase the living standards" of Joe the Commoner, if there's no way to produce goods and perform services more efficiently, price will just go up as the quantity of money increases. It's call inflation (except that modern inflation also depends of the degree of trust you put in immaterial money, aka banks) and it has ruined more than one nation.

taltamir
2009-09-26, 04:30 AM
Yeah, they do make money based on their Profession checks. People with no ranks in Profession get 1sp a day, and make up a significant proportion of the peasant population (remember it is a pseudo-medieval setting, most commoners are unskilled). Even with ranks in Profession (recall also that the average person is nowhere near as high a level as the average PC, so they can't get their Profession skill all that high) they still earn substantially less than adventurers who go out and kill treasure-guarding monsters on a regular basis.

mmm, a large portion are SERFS... they are property of the lord of the local land... so they, I presume, don't make ANY money.


Like others have been saying, the price of land should vary depending on what kind of society it is. Is it a feudal society, or is it something "semi-modern" wrapped in a medieval disguise (like sword and sorcery tends to be)? The difference between the two are vast and they don't really look anything remotely like one another.

In feudal societies the land is owned by the nobles (who are under the obligation to care for and protect this land, in return they get to rule it), each noble is responsible for an area with the size varying depending on his rank. The king owns the country, but it is divided into duchies with is controlled by the dukes. The dukes have their territories divided into counties, each controlled by a count. The counties are divided into baronies each ruled by a baron and so forth. Each and every one of these nobles will have their own fief in which they rule.

Technically, all you'd have to do to own some lands is to convince the noble in charge of that territory to give it to you as your fief. If it is unclaimed land you can either contact the local king and ask that he awards it to you (with you swearing fealty to him) or proclaim yourself the king over the area (your neighbouring kings and nobles might disagree though).

Now, in a fedual society money is really only used in the cities (and even then. Homes doesn't cost anything, goods do however). Land doesn't cost anything in itself, you can make an arrangement with your landlord to pay for it but it's not the default. Most peasants (serfs) of course doesn't, instead they are under obligation to spend a certain number of days (decided by the noble) to work for the landlord (working his fields, building roads, clearing land, cutting down wood, fishing, maintaining bridges and buildings... fun stuff like that)

I should perhaps mention that some nobles, particulary the ones living a bit extravagantely, would probably be willing to lease some of their fiefs to the one willing to pay what they need to maintain their current lifestyle. But apart from that virtually the entire economy uses "a days work" or "food for a day" to pay for services.

Now... if the world is more of the semi-modern magical places much modern fantasy depicts. Then I think the modern world, with some adaptations, is a more proper model for what things would cost.

very well put.

MickJay
2009-09-26, 04:50 AM
Some of the peasants might not even see any money beside a few copper pieces every now and then - many laws stated that the farmer had to pay his rent and taxes in what he produced or gathered (crop, honey etc).

Plus, IIRC, the price of a house in a city was supposed to be ~1000 gp?

If the level of civilization/population density in the wider area is low, then there might be a lot of unclaimed land around - about the only thing you'd need to do is get a permission from the nominal ruler of the area to create a settlement (in exchange for promise of paying taxes in the future). Depending on the quality and type of land, such deals would state that you have 10 or 20 years for cutting down trees, building the settlement, preparing the land for cultivation etc., during which the newly arrived people living there (and you as the organizer of the whole thing/the new lord) would be exempt from any taxation. Your main task in the whole thing would be to recruit a few dozen (or more) families from overpopulated regions and entice them to settle on your land. You probably won't get any income for at least a few years, and by the time the settlement starts bringing in taxes/produce, the income would be less than what your party spends on lodging and on booze :smalltongue:

edit: and yes, if you have a convenient way of transporting the goods for sale (e.g. river, or you're not far from a large city), you might want to include a clause in contracts with the settlers that they're going to work for a set period of time on your private land to grow your crops (if you don't want to bother with hiring labour).

If you want to take over an already settled land, you'd need to get rid of the current lord. Find some treacherous guy, find evidence, get them to the king/emperor, convince the ruler that you'd make a better and more trustworthy lord and hope you'll get the now lordless land. :smallbiggrin:

taltamir
2009-09-26, 04:56 AM
technically, humans should all be cattle for some of the utterly terrifying sentient monsters... especially the infectious kinds.

Johel
2009-09-26, 05:15 AM
technically, humans should all be cattle for some of the utterly terrifying sentient monsters... especially the infectious kinds.

We are.
It's just that the time for "The Harvest" hasn't come yet.
The stars aren't right... :smallamused: