Land from a Stronghold

[Ruethgar]

How much land do you get from a stronghold? I realize that each segment is 20x20x10, so that is easy to calculate the approximate price of a bit of unworked land using a storage area price and adjusting down for all of the things you didn't have to do. 30% less for labor, and about 13% less from work you don't do(normally 3% from site preparation, 5% from fabricating, 5% from working walls). So about 150 to outright buy a 20x20x10 unworked area, but then you can pay 8g on top of that to get arable land enough for a farm. But what size is a farm at minimum? And do you actually own the land or just control it?

Edit: I'm just gona put this here instead of making yet another post on land.

Resources

[SBG]Stronghold Builder's Guide
Dragon Magazine #80(I realize it is old but there were no AD&D elements needed for its use)
[A&EG]Arms and Equipment Guide
[RotD]Races of the Dragon
[DMG]Dungeon Master's Guide
[DMG]Dungeon Master's Guide II
[PHb]Players Handbook
[CS]Cityscape


The Land

How much does it cost? If you want to be fair, untamed land is about 155g per 20x20ft area plus the location adjustments(warm lawless plains are a nice 20% off). This is an extrapolation from the Basic Storage component, removing the need to prepare the land(3%), the labor to build(30%), the walls to make(5%), and furniture to craft(5%). So that's the basic cost of land according to data from just the SBG.

If you want to cheat your way into more land on the cheap, buy potential income sources, let's say a farm, for +5% and 20ha each. Dragon #80 in combination with SBG gives us an approximate hectare per person ratio. It takes 40ha to support a mansion, 20 farmers plus let's say 15, a banquette hall's worth of servants. The hall is a bit on the high end of servants per space, but I'm trying to be a little more reasonable. So we have 40ha to 35 people, lets round it up so it's a nice even 1ha per person. There is a minimum requirement to man an income source of 20 people, but as only a potential and not an established income source you don't actually need the people or their homes there so you can still use your 155g plot +5% per 20ha.

I feel obligated to mention Kelb_Panthera's advice however, that owning land by law does not mean you control it. You need to be able to defend the land you own or some bandit troupe will just take it for their own.

The Home
The cheapest way to make a home is to dig. The Profession Miner skill lets you carve out a rough stone home, but be sure you can also make a DC 20 Knowledge Engineering check to make sure you carve the ceiling to be structurally sound(autohypnosis and a specialize library can net you +6). Also note that Profession Miner is not trained only like most Profession skills, so you don't have to invest anything in being able to use it for sedimentary rock or softer. Plain furniture in A&EG is fairly cheap at a max of 5g/20lb. Without going into the SBG you don't get too many amenities with this method, but it's cheap.

Another cheap home is a caravan. A DMGII inn on wheels is only 1000g(horses included), instantly retire the business and you still have living quarters on wheels.

The most customizable is of course the stronghold, but it is also the most expensive unless you are optimizing your character for buying and building(or your cohort).

The Money
For most people, the craft, perform and profession skills are enough, just take 10 and done. Add on a stronghold and you make 1% back per year per income source that you have staff for. If you want to shoot yourself in the foot, buy a business and lose gold at every turn.

Or be a stickler for detail and determine exactly how much of what you make and how much you can sell it for. I started in on this with grasses since the grass growth side effect can be carried on to a cantrip(Gnomes, Desert and Arctic Templates, Magical Training etc.), it should make farming easy. It takes 13 iterations of grass growth on an area to yield a harvestable crop, this is assuming your DM is a stickler and says the side effect only makes 1 cell of grass but still. This is PC sale price. Sugarcane:5lb sugar/5ft sq 5s/lb, Bamboo:0.5/5ft sq at the least 1c/2 lb, Wheat and Straw:0.01lb/5ft sq each the wheat is 1c/2 lb not sure about the straw.

It should also be noted that tithes and taxes are a thing. Cityscape has more details, but it could take up to about 55% of your gold to be on good terms with god and country or as low as 19%.

[Kelb_Panthera]

How much land do you get from a stronghold? I realize that each segment is 20x20x10, so that is easy to calculate the approximate price of a bit of unworked land using a storage area price and adjusting down for all of the things you didn't have to do. 30% less for labor, and about 13% less from work you don't do(normally 3% from site preparation, 5% from fabricating, 5% from working walls). So about 150 to outright buy a 20x20x10 unworked area, but then you can pay 8g on top of that to get arable land enough for a farm. But what size is a farm at minimum? And do you actually own the land or just control it?

As much as it takes up and whatever you can reasonably control beyond that or however much the previous or current owner of that particular parcel gave you dominion over to put your stronghold on or some combination of the two.

[Ruethgar]

It takes 40 ha to support what amounts to a mansion according to a Dragon article, combine with SHBG and let's see. Minimum you need 20 people working for the farm plus let's say 15 more(the requirement for a banquet hall which is a bit more than a mansion but w/e). 35 people divided among 40ha, round down to 1ha per person. Remove the mansion entirely and you are left with the farm and the minimum staff of 20 for about 20ha.

Sound about right?

[Kelb_Panthera]

It takes 40 ha to support what amounts to a mansion according to a Dragon article, combine with SHBG and let's see. Minimum you need 20 people working for the farm plus let's say 15 more(the requirement for a banquet hall which is a bit more than a mansion but w/e). 35 people divided among 40ha, round down to 1ha per person. Remove the mansion entirely and you are left with the farm and the minimum staff of 20 for about 20ha.

Sound about right?

Sure, why not. That's not quite what I was getting at though.

The fact of the matter is; in most D&D settings, how much territory you actually own is dependent entirely, or nearly so, on your ability to take and hold that territory. If 60 hectares(?) is what it takes to support a mansion and its surrounding village then you damn well better be able to -hold- 60 hectares. The world is a dangerous place and the city-state is typically the highest order of settlement.

In some settings you get as high as hereditary monarchies over several cities and a liege lord may grant you a parcel. In that case you rule over however much the crown gives you, in name. However, in actuality, you still only rule as much as you can defend from the hazards of the region. If there's a serious bandit problem or marauding orc bands or the like, then your rule may not actually reach any further than the town walls. In some cities with powerful criminal organizations your rule might not even extend that far.

[Ruethgar]

I do recognize that owning by law and controlling by rule are two different things. This particular inquiry is for a dragon character(or close enough) and the owning tracts of land is more important than the ruling in his mind. He isn't exactly going for the manor house on the hill, that example was simply the only mention of acreage requirements I've found that I could draw from. His land is going to be mostly wild jungle akin to the Zhangjiajie mountains.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I do recognize that owning by law and controlling by rule are two different things. This particular inquiry is for a dragon character(or close enough) and the owning tracts of land is more important than the ruling in his mind. He isn't exactly going for the manor house on the hill, that example was simply the only mention of acreage requirements I've found that I could draw from. His land is going to be mostly wild jungle akin to the Zhangjiajie mountains.

..... It's a dragon.


...... No, seriously. It owns whatever it says it owns until and unless another, bigger dragon or a group of capable murderhobos comes along and says different.

Do you mean that this dragon disguises itself as a humanoid and inserts itself into several courts for the specific purpose of -legally- acquiring land as his hoard?

That's actually pretty baller.

If that's the case, monarchs aren't really in the habit of giving land based on the minimum required area to support a stronghold. Rather, they give land based on the deed(s) that earned it and then supply -some- funds to build a fortification to hold it if it's outside their proper borders but not part of a neighbor's holdings. Else they give an existing fortification and the associated lands that were granted when it was established, usually because the former lord of that stronghold passed on with no heirs or was deposed for perfidy and occasionally to weaken a member of the court that's growing too strong because of his holdings. Strict logic and logistics has fairly little to do with it.

[Ruethgar]

Well that sounds awesome... I'm now making a Xorvintaal dragon to disguise himself into the courts of men. Just imagine a dragon using alternate form to earn the right to be ten different nobles. Make it a Purple Dragon since they are fluffed to do this anyway and have a decent Cha score. Can use the red dragon class with a few substitutions since it matches up on LA and HD. Snag Magic Blooded for a little more Cha. Pity he doesn't have alternate form though, but there's a feat for that. How should leadership work if the guy is leading as multiple different people?


At any rate, the original idea was a much more bestial creature, nearer an animal than the giant mythical lizards of lore. This thread was intended to try and get as near a RAW method as able to obtain land for determining his starting gold after his home(of course that doesn't mean he actually physically bought the land, just that he spent resources claiming it).

Edit: As to them not giving you enough land to sustain yourself on, that is false. Strongholds are specifically called out as self-sustaining plus the 1% profit per income source.

[Yahzi]

The traditional farm is 40 acres, which is about 16 hectares. This will produce about 6000 lbs of grain (which is worth about 60 gp). You can feed about 8 -10 people on that, though they won't have any left over for animals.

IRL 75% of the population were subsistence farmers (for Vikings it was 95%). D&D worlds never have enough peasants.

[Kelb_Panthera]

D&D worlds never have enough peasants.

I don't get where this sentiment comes from. 91% of the population that isn't a PC class character or an NPC class of level 2 or higher is first level commoners. Of that latter group, about half or so are commoners of level 2 and higher. The overwhelming majority of most humanoid populations are comprised of peasants. That's not enough?

[Kelb_Panthera]

How should leadership work if the guy is leading as multiple different people?

I seem to recall a feat in heroes of battle that can significantly increase the number of followers a character has. How you divide up your followers is your choice.


Edit: As to them not giving you enough land to sustain yourself on, that is false. Strongholds are specifically called out as self-sustaining plus the 1% profit per income source.

Wrong way around. They give you land and money and then leave it to you to build the stronghold to defend it. Historically, you'd be given -way- more land than you could possibly defend without doing significantly better than the listed income. It's not that your land is as broad as necessary to sustain your stronghold but that your sronghold is as big as you can sustain based on the land and what you could glean from it.