Expenses
When not descending into the depths of the earth, exploring ruins for lost treasures, or waging war against the encroaching darkness, adventurers face more mundane realities. Even in a fantastical world, people require basic necessities such as shelter, sustenance, and clothing. These things cost money, although some lifestyles cost more than others.
Lifestyle expenses
| Lifestyle | Cost/Day |
|---|---|
| Wretched | — |
| Squalid | 1 sp |
| Poor | 2 sp |
| Modest | 1 gp |
| Comfortable | 2 gp |
| Wealthy | 4 gp |
| Aristocratic | ≥ 10 gp |
Player’s Handbook, p.157
Lifestyle expenses provide you with a simple way to account for the cost of living in a fantasy world. They cover your accommodations, food and drink, and all your other necessities. Furthermore, expenses cover the cost of maintaining your equipment so you can be ready when adventure next calls.
At the start of each week or month (your choice), choose a lifestyle from the Expenses table and pay the price to sustain that lifestyle. The prices listed are per day, so if you wish to calculate the cost of your chosen lifestyle over a thirty-day period, multiply the listed price by 30. Your lifestyle might change from one period to the next, based on the funds you have at your disposal, or you might maintain the same lifestyle throughout your character’s career.
Your lifestyle choice can have consequences. Maintaining a wealthy lifestyle might help you make contacts with the rich and powerful, though you run the risk of attracting thieves. Likewise, living frugally might help you avoid criminals, but you are unlikely to make powerful connections.
Wretched: You live in inhumane conditions. With no place to call home, you shelter wherever you can, sneaking into barns. huddling in old crates, and relying on the good graces of people better off than you. A wretched lifestyle presents abundant dangers. Violence, disease, and hunger follow you wherever you go. Other wretched people covet your armor, weapons, and adventuring gear, which represent a fortune by their standards. You are beneath the notice of most people.
Squalid: You live in a leaky stable, a mud-floored hut just outside town, or a vermin-infested boarding house in the worst part of town. You have shelter from the elements, but you live in a desperate and often violent environment, in places rife with disease, hunger, and misfortune. You are beneath the notice of most people, and you have few legal protections. Most people at this lifestyle level have suffered some terrible setback. They might be disturbed, marked as exiles, or suffer from disease.
Poor: A poor lifestyle means going without the comforts available in a stable community. Simple food and lodgings, threadbare clothing, and unpredictable conditions result in a sufficient, though probably unpleasant, experience. Your accommodations might be a room in a flophouse or in the common room above a tavern. You benefit from some legal protections, but you still have to contend with violence, crime, and disease. People at this lifestyle level tend to be unskilled laborers, costermongers, peddlers, thieves, mercenaries, and other disreputable types.
Modest: A modest lifestyle keeps you out of the slums and ensures that you can maintain your equipment. You live in an older part of town, renting a room in a boarding house, inn, or temple. You don’t go hungry or thirsty, and your living conditions are clean, if simple. Ordinary people living modest lifestyles include soldiers with families, laborers, students, priests, hedge wizards, and the like.
Comfortable: Choosing a comfortable lifestyle means that you can afford nicer clothing and can easily maintain your equipment. You live in a small cottage in a middle-class neighborhood or in a private room at a fine inn. You associate with merchants, skilled tradespeople, and military officers.
Wealthy: Choosing a wealthy lifestyle means living a life of luxury, though you might not have achieved the social status associated with the old money of nobility or royalty. You live a lifestyle comparable to that of a highly successful merchant, a favored servant of the royalty, or the owner of a few small businesses. You have respectable lodgings, usually a spacious home in a good part of town or a comfortable suite at a fine inn. You likely have a small staff of servants.
Aristocratic: You live a life of plenty and comfort. You move in circles populated by the most powerful people in the community. You have excellent lodgings, perhaps a townhouse in the nicest part of town or rooms in the finest inn. You dine at the best restaurants, retain the most skilled and fashionable tailor, and have servants attending to your every need. You receive invitations to the social gatherings of the rich and powerful, and spend evenings in the company of politicians, guild leaders, high priests, and nobility. You must also contend with the highest levels of deceit and treachery. The wealthier you are, the greater the chance you will be drawn into political intrigue as a pawn or participant.
Meals & lodging
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Ale | |
| Gallon | 2 sp |
| Mug | 4 cp |
| Banquet (per person) | 10 gp |
| Bread, loaf | 2 cp |
| Cheese, hunk | 1 sp |
| Inn stay (per day) | |
| Squalid | 7 cp |
| Poor | 1 sp |
| Modest | 5 sp |
| Comfortable | 8 sp |
| Wealthy | 2 gp |
| Aristocratic | 4 gp |
| Meals (per day) | |
| Squalid | 3 cp |
| Poor | 6 cp |
| Modest | 3 sp |
| Comfortable | 5 sp |
| Wealthy | 8 sp |
| Aristocratic | 2gP |
| Meat, chunk | 3 sp |
| Wine | |
| Common (pitcher) | 2 sp |
| Fine (bottle) | 10 gp |
Player’s Handbook, p.158
The Food, Drink, and Lodging table gives prices for individual food items and a single night’s lodging. These prices are included in your total lifestyle expenses.
Self-sufficiency
The expenses and lifestyles described in this chapter assume that you are spending your time between adventures in town, availing yourself of whatever services you can afford—paying for food and shelter, paying townspeople to sharpen your sword and repair your armor, and so on. Some characters, though, might prefer to spend their time away from civilization, sustaining themselves in the wild by hunting, foraging, and repairing their own gear. Maintaining this kind of lifestyle doesn’t require you to spend any coin, but it is time-consuming. If you spend your time between adventures practicing a profession, as described in chapter 8, you can eke out the equivalent of a poor lifestyle. Proficiency in the Survival skill lets you live at the equivalent of a comfortable lifestyle.
Services
| Service | Pay |
|---|---|
| Coach cab | |
| Between towns | 3 cp per mile |
| Within a city | 1 cp |
| Hireling | |
| Skilled | 2 gp per day |
| Untrained | 2 sp per day |
| Messenger | 2 cp per mile |
| Road or gate toll | 1 cp |
| Ship’s passage | 1 sp per mile |
Player’s Handbook, p.159
Adventurers can pay nonplayer characters to assist them or act on their behalf in a variety of circumstances. Most such hirelings have fairly ordinary skills, while others are masters of a craft or art, and a few are experts with specialized adventuring skills.
Some of the most basic types of hirelings appear on the Services table. Other common hirelings include any of the wide variety of people who inhabit a typical town or city, when the adventurers pay them to perform a specific task. For example, a wizard might pay a carpenter to construct an elaborate chest (and its miniature replica) for use in the secret chest spell. A fighter might commission a blacksmith to forge a special sword. A bard might pay a tailor to make exquisite clothing for an upcoming performance in front of the duke.
Other hirelings provide more expert or dangerous services. Mercenary soldiers paid to help the adventurers take on a hobgoblin army are hirelings, as are sages hired to research ancient or esoteric lore. If a high-level adventurer establishes a stronghold of some kind, he or she might hire a whole staff of servants and agents to run the place, from a castellan or steward to menial laborers to keep the stables clean. These hirelings often enjoy a long-term contract that includes a place to live within the stronghold as part of the offered compensation.
Skilled hirelings include anyone hired to perform a service that involves a proficiency (including weapon, toot, or skill): a mercenary, artisan, scribe, and so on. The pay shown is a minimum; some expert hirelings require more pay. Untrained hirelings are hired for menial work that requires no particular skill and can include laborers, porters, maids, and similar workers.
Magewrights
Wayfarer’s Guide to Eberron, pp.94–95
In civilized regions and cities, magic is a tool that’s incorporated into many jobs. There are entirely magical careers, such as the medium or the oracle. But much of the time, mundane skill and magic are combined together. A lamplighter can work with mundane lanterns, but also learns continual flame to create and maintain the everbright lanterns that light the streets. A chef can heat and flavor food with a cantrip.
A magewright knows one to four cantrips or spells. Magewrights don’t use spell slots. Cantrips can be used casually, but their spells are usually cast as rituals—even if the spell doesn’t normally have the ritual tag. When converting a spell to a magewright ritual, it can have a casting time of up to one hour. It’s also common for a magewright’s ritual to have an additional component cost in gold pieces. A typical cost would be 25 gp for a 1st level ritual, 50 gp for a 2nd level ritual, doubled for each subsequent level; but this is only a basic guideline. The point is that the limitations on a magewright are time and money. A locksmith can cast more than one arcane lock in a day; but it takes an hour and 50 gp for each lock they want to create.
While the common spell list is a starting point for magewright spells, you can modify these spells to fit the job. Spells used by adventurers are often quite versatile. Prestidigitation can heat or chill an object, light or extinguish a flame. Both the lamplighter and the chef may know prestidigitation, but the chef’s version may only work on food, while the lamplighter can only light or extinguish flames. An actor may know a version of thaumaturgy that helps project their voice but doesn’t provide any of the other benefits. Artisans often know a version of guidance that only helps with their particular art. This could also result in a magewright having a spell that’s superior to the usual version of a spell, reflecting their tight focus. An oracle’s version of augury might be able to predict outcomes up to a week in advance, as it’s hard to make a business out of predicting events that occur in the next 30 minutes.
In dealing with a magewright, think about the form their magic takes. A locksmith can perform knock as a ritual. But they don’t just snap their fingers. They may use lengths of wire or iron rods, tracing patterns around the lock they’re dealing with while murmuring incantations. An oracle might work with cards or dice, or study charts of planar conjunctions. The magewright performs magic as both a job and a science.
Here are some examples of magewrights and the services they provide. Not every healer can cast lesser restoration, and not every oracle can cast divination—these are general guidelines.
- Chef. Prestidigitation (food only), purify food & drink (ritual), gentle repose (ritual, food only). Familiar with cook’s tools.
- Healer. Proficient with Medicine and herbalism kits. spare the dying, detect poison & disease (ritual), lesser restoration (1-hour ritual, 50 gp component cost).
- Launderer. Mending, prestidigitation both only affect fabric.
- Lamplighter. Light, continual flame (1-hour ritual, 50 gp component cost); uses tinker’s tools to create and repair lanterns.
- Locksmith. Arcane lock (1-hour ritual, 50 gp component cost), knock (ritual, 50 gp component cost); proficient with thieves’ tools and tinker’s tools.
- Medium. Speak with dead (ritual, 100 gp component cost). Some mediums use a form of minor illusion to conjure an image of the deceased. A medium might be proficient in Insight to help mourners deal with grief—or in Deception.
- Oracle. Augury (ritual, 50 gp cost); divination (1-hour ritual, 200 gp cost).
The term magewright specifically refers to an arcane spellcaster. In religious communities adventures may find divine casters performing these same functions. Such a divine caster is called an adept. Divine magic is a gift instead of a science, and adepts typically work on behalf of their faith rather than selling their services.
Spellcasting
Player’s Handbook, p.159
People who are able to cast spells don’t fall into the category of ordinary hirelings. It might be possible to find someone willing to cast a spell in exchange for coin or favors, but it is rarely easy and no established pay rates exist. As a rule, the higher the level of the desired spell, the harder it is to find someone who can cast it and the more it costs.
Hiring someone to cast a relatively common spell of 1st or 2nd level, such as cure wounds or identify, is easy enough in a city or town, and might cost 10 to 50 gold pieces (plus the cost of any expensive material components). Finding someone able and willing to cast a higher-level spell might involve traveling to a large city, perhaps one with a university or prominent temple. Once found, the spellcaster might ask for a service instead of payment—the kind of service that only adventurers can provide, such as retrieving a rare item from a dangerous locale or traversing a monster- infested wilderness to deliver something important to a distant settlement.
Property
| Property | Construction | Staff | Daily Cost | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | Days | Skilled | Untr. | ||
| Abbey | 50,000 | 400 | 5 | 25 | 20 gp |
| Castle (S) / Keep | 50,000 | 400 | 50 | 50 | 100 gp |
| Castle (M) | 160,000 | 700 | 100 | 70 | 200 gp |
| Castle (L) / Palace | 500,000 | 1,200 | 200 | 100 | 400 gp |
| Farm | 5,000 | 60 | 1 | 2 | 5 sp |
| Guildhall | 5,000 | 60 | 5 | 3 | 5 gp |
| Inn, rural | 5,000 | 60 | 5 | 10 | 10 gp |
| Inn, urban | 5,000 | 60 | 1 | 5 | 5 gp |
| Lodge, hunting | 5,000 | 60 | 1 | – | 5 sp |
| Noble estate | 25,000 | 150 | 3 | 15 | 10 gp |
| Outpost / Fort | 15,000 | 100 | 20 | 40 | 50 gp |
| Shop | 5,000 | 60 | 1 | – | 2 gp |
| Temple (S) | 25,000 | 150 | 2 | – | 1 gp |
| Temple (L) | 50,000 | 400 | 10 | 10 | 25 gp |
| Tower, fortified | 15,000 | 100 | 10 | – | 25 gp |
| Trading post | 5,000 | 60 | 4 | 2 | 10 gp |
Construction
Dungeon Master’s Guide, p.128
A character can spend time between adventures building a stronghold. Before work can begin, the character must acquire a plot of land. If the estate lies within a kingdom or similar domain, the character will need a royal charter (a legal document granting permission to oversee the estate in the name of the crown), a land grant (a legal document bequeathing custody of the land to the character for as long as he or she remains loyal to the crown), or a deed (a legal document that serves as proof of ownership). Land can also be acquired by inheritance or other means.
Royal charters and land grants are usually given by the crown as a reward for faithful service, although they can also be bought. Deeds can be bought or inherited. A small estate might sell for as little as 100 gp or as much as 1,000 gp. A large estate might cost 5,000 gp or more, if it can be bought at all. Once the estate is secured, a character needs access to building materials and laborers.
Construction Cost: The cost in gold pieces of constructing the property's buildings (including materials and labor).
Construction Days: The amount of time construction will take—provided that the character is using downtime to oversee construction. Work can continue while the character is away, but each day the character is away adds 3 days to the construction time.
Operation
Dungeon Master’s Guide, p.126–127
Besides the expenses associated with maintaining a particular lifestyle, adventurers might have additional drains on their adventuring income. Player characters who come into possession of property, own businesses. and employ hirelings must cover the expenses that accompany these ventures.
It’s not unusual for adventurers—especially after 10th level—to gain possession of a castle, a tavern, or another piece of property. They might buy it with their hard-won loot, take it by force, obtain it in a lucky draw from a deck of many things, or acquire it by other means.
The Property Details table shows the daily upkeep cost for any such property. (The cost of a normal residence isn’t included here because it falls under lifestyle expenses) Maintenance expenses need to be paid every 30 days. Given that adventurers spend much of their time adventuring, staff includes a steward who can make payments in the party’s absence.
Staff, Skilled & Untrained: The staff required to operate and maintain the property. See Services (above) for the differences between skilled and untrained hirelings.
Daily Cost: The cost includes everything it takes to maintain the property and keep things running smoothly, including the salaries of hirelings. If the property earns money that can offset maintenance costs (by charging fees, collecting tithes or donations, or selling goods), that is taken into account in the table.
Businesses
An adventurer-owned business can earn enough money to cover its own maintenance costs. However, the owner needs to periodically ensure that everything is running smoothly by tending to the business between adventures. See the information on Running a business under Downtime activities.
Garrisons
Castles and keeps employ soldiers (use the veteran and guard statistics in the Monster Manual) to defend them. Roadside inns, outposts and forts, palaces, and temples rely on less-experienced defenders (use the guard statistics in the Monster Manual). These armed warriors make up the bulk of a property’s skilled hirelings.
