How much would a circus big top cost/weigh?

[unseenmage]

I'm playing a Telepath Psion who's chaining Thrallherd and turning it into a monster hunting organization, a traveling circus called The Menagerie.

I found tents in the old Arms and Equipment Guide and I noticed they could form a pattern. What would be the population capacity, price, and weight of a circus bigtop? I mean 30+ huge size, 20 person tents will be impressive but a true Big Top would be awesome.

Circus Tents:
6 sets of 2 huge 20 person tents. 6x2x20= enough tent for 240 individuals.
A Big Top would follow this progression possibly:

Tent -- 1 person -- 5 gold -- 10 pounds -- large object – set up 5 minutes – tear down 2 minutes
Large Tent -- 4 person -- 20 gold -- 40 pounds -- large object – set up 10 minutes – tear down 3 minutes
Teepee -- 8 person -- 60 gold -- 100 pounds -- huge object – set up 30 minutes – tear down 10 minutes
Pavilion -- 20 person -- 100 gold -- 400 pounds -- huge object – set up 90 minutes – tear down 20 minutes
Grand Pavilion – 40 person -- 400 gold – 1,000 pounds -- huge object – set up 3 hours – tear down 1 hour
Royal Pavilion – 80 person – 1,200 gold – 2 tons -- gargantuan object – set up 6 hours – tear down 2 hours
Circus Tent -- 100 person – 2,000 gold – 5 tons -- gargantuan object – set up 12 hours – tear down 3 hours
Grand Circus Tent -- 500 person -- 2,500 gold – 20 tons -- gargantuan object – set up 1 day – tear down 6 hours
Royal Circus Tent -- 2,500 person -- 12,500 gold – 50 tons -- colossal object – set up 12 days – tear down 3 days
Big Top -- 12,500 person -- 62,500 gold – 125 tons -- colossal object – set up 14 days – tear down 4 days

Setting Up Tents
It takes a certain number of successful rolls to set up a tent. Each roll takes one minute of work. These rolls can be made with the skill Survival or the ability Strength. Larger tents are more difficult to set up.
Packing up a tent takes roughly a quarter as long as assembling it and half the manpower.
Pavilion and circus tents are big enough to have a fire tree sizes smaller than the tent in the center.

Number of workers
Larger tents require more people to set up. For every person below the minimum requirement, add 5 to the DC of all rolls. Workers over the minimum number may help, contributing their own rolls, but only up to twice the minimum requirement. (More than that, and they just get in the way.) You may take 10 on this roll.
DC Modifiers
Improvised tent, with materials +5 (May not roll STR, only Survival)
Improvised shelter, no materials +10 (May not roll STR, only Survival)
Darkness +5

For wind, use the table of Wind Effects penalties to fly:
• Light (0–10 mph) —
• Moderate (11–20 mph) —
• Strong (21–30 mph) –2
• Severe (31–50 mph) –4
• Windstorm (51–74 mph) –8
• Hurricane (75–174 mph) –12
• Tornado (175–300 mph) –16

Tents by Size
Tent: large (1-2 occupants*), minimum workers 1, DC 8, rolls required 5
Large tent: large (2-4 occupants), minimum workers 2, DC 10, rolls required 10**
Teepee: huge (4-8 occupants), minimum workers 2, DC 12, rolls required 20
Pavilion: huge (10-20 occupants), minimum workers 4, DC 14, rolls required 40
Grand Pavilion: huge (20-40 occupants), minimum workers 6, DC 16, rolls required 80
Royal Pavilion: gargantuan (40-80 occupants), minimum workers 8, DC 18, rolls required 160
Circus Tent: gargantuan (80-100 occupants), minimum workers 16, DC 20, rolls required 320
Grand Circus Tent: gargantuan (100-500 occupants), minimum workers 32, DC 22, rolls required 640
Royal Circus Tent: colossal 1,000-2,500 occupants), minimum workers 64, DC 24, rolls required 1,280
Big Top: colossal 9,500-12,500 occupants), minimum workers 128, DC 28, rolls required 2,560

*Occupants - The lower number is how many people can sleep comfortably with space for bedding and supplies. The higher number is how many people can sleep shoulder-to-shoulder, or how many can sit or stand comfortably. Twice the larger number can huddle in a tent in an emergency, but it ain't comfy!
**Rolls over 10 - For brevity, a single roll can represent 10 minutes of work rather than one minute. If so, divide the number of rolls required by 10.


Edit: Found some more info on the Paizo boards and I tried combining the two. Corrections to my math and criticisms of the whole idea more than welcome.

[HalfQuart]

I don't know, but there's probably some way to do it with magic... for starters, there's the Rod of Splendor which among other things lets you create a silk pavilion that is 60' across and accommodates 100 people.

[ericgrau]

For weight a square yard of canvas weighs 1 lb. 60'x60' with 10 foot high walls and a slight slope is around 700 square yards so 700 lbs. I'd guess the poles might add another 50 lbs., roughly.

The cost of canvas is only 1 sp a yard but there's a lot of assembly involved so I dunno.

[unseenmage]

Source on those bulk canvas weights and prices?

[ericgrau]

SRD/PHB: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#adventuringGear

Cloth is typically cut from rolls that are a yard wide. Then on top of that there's the labor of sewing those 3 foot wide strips together. A large seamless cloth is significantly more expensive so most likely the big top would be stitched together. That still adds an unknown labor cost and markup.

[karkus]

Why the hell is your circus tent more expensive than a game-altering magic item? :smallconfused: If it's that important, pay for a pavilion tent and just assume that it covered the costs for the cloth, rope, etc., and that your followers were handy enough to construct the rest of it.

If you're high enough level to even consider taking a prestige class, let alone if you already have one, then the chances are that you're powerful enough to also pull several hundred gps out of your psychic butt in order to pay for any non-magical, non-futuristic item you can think of.

[unseenmage]

Because a Big Top style circus tent IS a futuristic item from what I gather.

From what little I've read it turns out that tents of that size weren't implemented until trains started being used to haul the circus itself. Bigger cargo allowance led to bigger tents and so on.

Pre-train it seems that circuses (such as they were) travelled by wagon, had single pole circular tents, and a max of about 100-800 capacity.

I was amused to read that at their biggest Big Tops had room for upwards of 14,000 spectators! It was nice to see that my simple little extrapolation got even close.

Mind you also, those huge circuses could evidently be packed up in a little over an hour. A fantastic difference from my chart. Not sure how I'm going to reconcile that one. Esp. in a gameworld where every one of my npc followers has Mending prepared and they can just kick the pole down and magic-repair the mess later.