Creating a castle

[Fargazer]

So in this recent 3.5 campaign my associates were playing in, one person's character, who recently became a vampire, stole from a dragon some sapphires amounting to about 250,000 gold in value. His natural reaction to becoming a vampire with that much gold in his pocket, was to invest in a castle of his own which he could sit in and play an organ ominously while people walk up the menacing spiral staircase, after getting through the obligatory permanent mist spells cast around the countryside.

What followed was an hour long argument concerning qualititative exchange rates and trying to figure out how much it would ultimatly cost to create a castle by paying masons, laborers, and porters, and possibly a mercenary army to defend them.

Calculating for about 1500 laborers and a sizable army, it would come to about 200 gold per day. With four years of labor, we assumed we would be able to create a smallish castle at the very least.

The dungeon master instead did some analysis of real castles and tried to do some comparisons to real costs for castles, and instead thought we were ridiculously underestimating the cost, and simply can't afford one.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Are you aware of the existence of the stronghold builder's guidebook?

According to that book, your DM is right. You are -grossly- underestimating the cost of a fortified castle.

[Ruethgar]

Any army base for 100 is 24,000g with a 612g/month upkeep. That includes food, training area, barracks, mess hall, and soldiers. Guard tower 800g 36g upkeep. A fancy banquet hall 136,200g 75g/month upkeep. So yea, very expensive.

[INoKnowNames]

Wait, Vampires don't get Free Castles? How the hell does Dracula keep getting a base, then? It usually dies with him.

Can't Vampires freely Psycho Break people? That should help with some of it, if a bit dubious in morals...

...though he sounds like he's ready to embrace his inner Alucard, Mr. Pipe Player; Zombified or Hypnotized Slaves are free labor, no? The later at least until they drop dead, but then they turn into the former, so you're still set.

...unless he's still a good guy, in which case, that complicates things a bit. Not exactly a mid level thing to do, at least without spells. With spells, summoning your own help or creating animatronics to do it effortlessly forever seems like they become options to help with the expenses, though you'd still need a lot of materials...

As for the price, I was under the assumption that 1 Gp is basically a Dollar. And 250,000 for a Castle? Sounds like a steal to me... Don't even have to be a millionaire to get that much saved up; every family could get a Caste!

[incarnate236]

Pathfinder SRD also has some pretty detailed stuff in their downtime rules section. Cost per room build times, by building etc. I'm rebuilding a dungeon in game now to serve as our party HQ using their system.

[Milo v3]

As for the price, I was under the assumption that 1 Gp is basically a Dollar. And 250,000 for a Castle? Sounds like a steal to me... Don't even have to be a millionaire to get that much saved up; every family could get a Caste!

1 gp equals about $20 according to d20 modern, so he's got about $5,000,000 to make the castle with.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Going by the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook a simple 2 story tower with basic amenities already costs 70,000gp, with the cheaper example castles coming in at 350-600k gp.

Note that these example castles aren't really all that impressive. They tend to be on the small side, rather light on defenses and lack any kind of wondrous architecture or extra features. For a castle that's actually worthy of the name i'd plan on spending at least 1,000,000 gp, provided you can live without things like flight, plane shifting, teleportation and the more resilient building materials.

[Sewercop]

Landlord feat would be a nice start, doublilng his money and giving him more. So 500k and what his level says to start out. Hopefully he got a spellcaster that can cut down the costs aswell. Unseen crafters en mass etc, lyre of building.

[JDL]

Pfft, Lyre of Building, 13,000 gp.

Buy 10 of them.

Buy building materials.

Hire 10 bards with the change.

Get them to all play for as long as possible to equal three days worth of 1,000 workers every 30 minutes. Even if they immediately fail the checks (in which case I'd be turning those bards into snacks for your vampire) that's a hell of a lot of work being done.

Enjoy your DM's headache figuring out how much actually gets built in that time.

[ILM]

Going by the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook a simple 2 story tower with basic amenities already costs 70,000gp, with the cheaper example castles coming in at 350-600k gp.

Note that these example castles aren't really all that impressive. They tend to be on the small side, rather light on defenses and lack any kind of wondrous architecture or extra features. For a castle that's actually worthy of the name i'd plan on spending at least 1,000,000 gp, provided you can live without things like flight, plane shifting, teleportation and the more resilient building materials.
And yet the DMG's own Instant Fortress has 3 levels (or at least, can fit 3 levels since it's 30 ft high), has magical defenses and walls made of adamantium, and fits in your pocket with a command word - and only costs 55,000 gp. The SBG is way overpriced for 3.5.

In the SRD, a manor house costs 50,000 gp. In Cityscape, it costs 2d8*1000 gp. Pretty sure that 250,000 gp should get you a deluxe castle and not just like one fancy dining room and one gold-plated library like the SBG would have it.

[lytokk]

Alternatively, instead of building a new castle, it might be cheaper to rebuild an old one. Fix structural issues, and if the foundation is already there you might get lucky.

I've been watching too much HGTV and DIY if this was the first thought that came to mind.

[atemu1234]

Make a deal with surrounding nations. If a trading post / city / embassy were to spring up around it, it would be mutually beneficial, so they might be willing to give you some cash.

[Milo v3]

If you can, I suggest you use pathfinder's Downtime (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCampaign/downtime.html)rules.

With those rules you can purchase a castle for only 7,390 gp, and you can spend the rest of your money adding in extra rooms, cathedrals, waterfronts, stores, mage towers, and bank for all your treasure.