Selling/buying real estate in D&D

[Sovereign88]

Hello there,

in a previous campaign, one of my characters was given some land as a reward for saving a local town. Also, I've got enough material to build my own house. :smallsmile:. Now I was wondering if there were some rules about buying and selling land, houses, etc.

[Slipperychicken]

Prices for various types of buildings. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#cityBuildings)

I get the feeling most D&D campaigns don't have an easily-exploited real estate bubble. In the medieval era, most people simply didn't own land (peasants came with the land and buildings, like property), or were just not mobile enough to make it worthwhile.

[OzymandiasX]

There is a bit in the DMG on property upkeep, but most people prefer to keep such things vague, as flipping houses (in the investment sense) isn't particularly heroic or exciting.

[HurinTheCursed]

While it's not really what most groups seek, it can work for regional campaigns or feudal worlds. Once you have the responsability to protect a place, you try to catch the forest thieves, prevent the mad sorcerer from taking revenge on the city, spy enemy lords, undermine invasions and defend siege battles...

Warhammer, Pendragon, L5R are settings in which it seems natural. All you need is someone to look after the daily bureaucracy. And seeking glorious deeds to find a good bride and having heirs (which at the medieval time, would not always be educated by their parents or even see them often) would bring some nice roleplaying opportunities.

The two problems are to keep a balance and a strong link in the PCs group and to protect your own "dungeon".

[dascarletm]

Stronghold Builders Guide?

[Srasy]

I think the only real way to do this in dnd is to sell/give the hero's plot of land that is basically worthless because of the constant raiding/occupation so the hero's go over there clear it out and either sell it or build on it which both can leave some interesting ways for the story to go

[Zero grim]

A second push for stronghold builders guide.

It basically has everything you could possibly need, including but not limited to:

Cost of land, Cost of resources, Cost of labour, Expected returns, Location, Location, Location.

Its one of my favourite books to use as a GM or a player, nothing quite gets a party motivated like telling them their base of operations is a giant floating island that can shift into different planes.

The costs are very steep if memory serves, proving the reason why Nobles don't just have +10 everything is because they spent all their money on buying the castle :)

[Sovereign88]

Stronghold Builders Guide?

Sadly there is very little information about obtaining land and none at all about selling it. The book helps with the rest though. Costs for maintaining a keep, income and taxes, staff, etc. My plan is to get the leadership feat and have my followers run the keep for me while I am out adventuring. I just need a couple of acres more.... Maybe it's because I am german but invasion and conquering comes to mind :smallwink:. Thanks for the input so far:smallsmile:.

[Zero grim]

There is a brief section on costs of land I believe, but you can just reverse this if your selling it, possibly with the normal PC discount of 50%.

Invasion and conquering is good for grabbing land but how will you staff the land, conquering a village wont mean the people of the village will like you, for small villages you can set yourself up as a hero who saves them from impending doom such as an illusionary or paid off dragon, they are thankful for the rescue and you ask that in order to scare away other dangers that they fly your flag for their own safety, once you have a few such villages form an alliance, and who better to lead this alliance then yourself or another trusted party member/cohort.

Or the dirt cheap necromancer approach, invade them with your army, kill the ones who fight back, sell most of them as slaves and any that cant be sold as slaves you can sacrifice to your god or sell in bulk to necromancers, you can find a profit anywhere depending on how evil you want to get.

(I suppose there's always just form a regular empire with trust and peace, but those always topple once an evil/stupid right hand man comes along and ruins everything)

[Fouredged Sword]

Well actually, for most of history just walking up and punching out the main power in the area was enough to set yourself up as the local lord. If you are the biggest, baddest toughest guy around all the little villages WANT you lording over them. It's not just the last dragon (or army) who attacked they are afraid of. It's the next dragon that comes around. They need someone around who can fight it and win, even if they are a bit of a jerk and a lot bossy.

[Cirrylius]

There is a brief section on costs of land I believe,
Off the top of my head, I thiiiink that's a modifier applied to structures for appropriate terrain, not an actual pricing guide.



The costs are very steep if memory serves, proving the reason why Nobles don't just have +10 everything is because they spent all their money on buying the castle :)
This. There's a lot of clamor online that the Basic, serf-level prices for stronghold components are outrageously high, although the prices are less exorbitant (relatively) as quality improves, and the magical improvements seem about in line for what you'd expect. Part of this has been attributed to the fact that buildings in the SBG are erected super fast compared to realistic historical example, and that there's no rules included for ongoing upkeep of structures. Since I'm a perennial fence sitter, I'll just tell you that the argument is out there, so YMMV.

I actually just got a third-party book called The Land and Home Guide, by Dark Quest Games, and it's got rules for pricing buildings [and land, as well as material on taxes, landowner duties, agriculture, building roads, and increasing/decreasing work crews]. The prices for stronghold building are lower (more realistic, some would say), but the benefits/drawbacks of having high-quality/crappy facilities are almost completely absent, and it requires a higher level of detail for furnishings instead of SBG's approach of "this is what's in a room of this type". It's well worth a look just for the additional material that I [bracketed] above, IMO.

There's also stuff in an Expedious Retreat Press book called A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe, but I don't actually have any personal experience with that apart from the name.

[Sovereign88]

Thank you all for your advice. It is much appreciated and very helpfull.

[Rhynn]

I get the feeling most D&D campaigns don't have an easily-exploited real estate bubble. In the medieval era, most people simply didn't own land (peasants came with the land and buildings, like property), or were just not mobile enough to make it worthwhile.

Yeah, modern assumptions/understandings of land ownership really wouldn't apply, most likely. Buying and selling property wasn't really a thing in the medieval period.

You owned land either allodially (in your own right) or as a grant from liege to vassal. Owning land pretty much made you a noble, although obviously this varied from place to place and time to time. (I'm honestly not too familiar with how it worked in European free cities, though!) If you owned land allodially, you wouldn't be giving it away to anyone (until much later, when nobility sometimes did end up having to sell their lands to support them), although if you owned enough you'd certainly be splitting off pieces to grant to vassals. Land was also often held fee tail, which meant it legally couldn't pass out of the ownership of the holding family. (Fee simple was actually owning the land and being able to dispose of it as you wuld.)

A land grant would usually be the ultimate reward, because it's essentially making someone a noble (knighthood might or might not be a greater reward; usually, knighting someone required either arming them or providing them with land to support themselves as a knight, which would be 1200-2400 acres, depending). The amount of land, of course, determines if it's worth anything. 1200-1600 acres was a knight's fee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight%27s_fee), in theory (but often not in practice) enough to support a knight, his arms, armor, horses, squires, and a few men-at-arms or yeomen.

Obviously, this sort of land grant is a perfect reward for adventurers who have done something great - dukes and counts had many, many knights and could probably afford to break off a manor and its knight's fee of land - and older editions of D&D actually assumed level 9+ adventurers would go off to found considerably larger (county-sized) domains of their own in border marches or frontiers.

Smaller land grants in towns would probably come with a property and maybe a license to run a specific kind of business. (You can't just start any kind of business you want in a town owned by a noble, and free cities probably used similar licensing since they were largely controlled by guilds AFAIK.)

Edit: Also, yes, A Magical Medieval Society is pretty great for D&D 3.X. It does a good job of presenting the historical background, then fitting it into D&D 3E rules, more or less. It's not as great as Adventurer Conqueror King (see sig), but that's a pretty different game.