Where would I find rules covering the construction costs for buildings, fortifications, etc and where would I find rules for the costs of running a small town?
Where would I find rules covering the construction costs for buildings, fortifications, etc and where would I find rules for the costs of running a small town?
Core? There isn't anything. It's up to the DM or "handwaved" to work in the background so to speak.
Kingmaker from what I have seen has some costs but also some additional mechanics to make it work, could check into that.
Kingmaker from what I have seen has some costs but also some additional mechanics to make it work, could check into that.
Kingmaker's designed for kingdom-level stuff. You do build up towns as part of your kingdom, but it would fall apart if you try to use it for a single town without heavy modification. (Way too many leaders necessary, and you'd never have to worry about consumption or growth at all, so you could just save up BP until you could afford whatever building you want.)
I'd definitely start with the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook as recommended above.
The Stronghold Builder's Guide is insane in its pricing (i.e. it's all 'adventurer pricing'). The smallest, most basic keep example they've got is in the order of 70,000gp. It costs 2000gp to buy a basic kitchen (not including the cost of the walls!). Your basic run-of-the-mill Inn would cost in the order of 20000gp to build. I'd suggest slashing the price of everything in the book by a factor of 10 except for anything magic-related.
Alternatively, the Land and Home Guide, by Dark Quest Games, is a cheap .pdf you can buy on DriveThruRPG for something like $2. Its building prices are a lot more reasonable and it covers things like buying tracts of land and doing agriculture and the like.
The basic kitchen is something a large household would have, not a small shack. It's space enough to prepare meals for 15 people by the description. It also says a cottage is about 1 stronghold space, and a simple house is about 4. Also, there's no charge for wooden walls on the ground floor.
An inn would probably be around the size of a grand house, 7 spaces. That's a kitchen, a dining hall, storage, a barracks and a bedrooms x2. That's room for 30 in the dining hall, though the kitchen can only handle half that at once, ten cheap beds (cots in the barracks area) and 4 good ones (each bedroom space is divided in two, though the innkeeper probably sleeps in one of those). With the free wooden walls, that's 6,050 gp plus or minus a bit depending on where you build it. A fancy tavern in a big city with a bigger kitchen and more rooms would cost more. What do you think an inn should cost? It's not like everyone could afford one.
Edit: Also, the basic keep isn't the smallest keep. It's only the smallest they provided in the examples. It's 28 stronghold spaces. They suggest 12 for an actually small keep.
Edit again: A decently skilled laborer (level 2, maybe 3) could fairly easily have a +10 Profession check, netting 10 gp per week. With an average cost of living (10 gp per month), they'd be saving up 30 gp a month. After 17 years of work, they could retire and build that inn they've always wanted. Seems reasonable to me.
Edit yet again: A cottage would probably just be a single common area, costing just 500 gp. That's just a year and a half's savings from the above laborer.
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I'm bored:
Using the stronghold builder's guidebook, here are some building prices. Note that this assumes your new town is in (or very near) a temperate forest 50-100 miles from a large metropolis (for a total +0% to most prices and 10% off wooden walls that aren't already free). This also assumes that the site is neither particularly rich or poor in materials (other than wood) or defensible positions. A mid-level druid or cleric can potentially offer some spells that could save a bit of money.
It takes one week per 10000 gp to build these. For those without the book, 1 stronghold space is roughly 400 square feet.
Small cottage (1 ss, 500 gp): Basically an empty wooden box.
1 common area - 1 ss - 500 gp
Walls - free
Farm house (3.5 ss, 3300 gp): Room for a large family (up to 10 people), though not in comfort.
1 barracks - 1 ss - 400 gp
1 kitchen - 1 ss - 2000 gp
1 bath - 0.5 ss - 400 gp
1 common area - 1 ss - 500 gp
Walls - free
Barn (4 ss, 1750 gp): A big wooden box. Has stalls for 6 large animals.
1 stable - 1 ss - 1000 gp
3 storage - 3 ss - 750 gp
Walls - free
Town house (3 ss, 1800 gp): Residents in a town house probably don't cook much for themselves. Also many people in a town like this live where they work.
1 bedroom - 1 ss - 700 gp
1 bath - 0.5 ss - 400 gp
1 common area - 1 ss - 500 gp
1 study/office - 0.5 ss - 200 gp
Walls - free
A small inn (7 ss, 6050 gp): Something you might find in a small town. All on one floor. 10 cheap beds. 4 good ones, though one of those is used by the innkeeper.
1 kitchen - 1 ss - 2000 gp
1 dining hall - 2 ss - 2000 gp
1 storage - 1 ss - 250 gp
1 barracks - 1 ss - 400 gp
2 bedrooms - 2 ss - 1400 gp
Walls - free
A shop (4 ss, 1950 gp): The owner lives in the back. Includes work space, though some specific workshops may cost more.
1 shop - 1 ss - 400 gp
1 storage - 1 ss - 250 gp
1 workplace - 1 ss - 500 gp
1 bedroom suite - 1 ss - 800 gp
Walls - free
A fancy inn (23 ss, 117860 gp): Stone outer walls, two floors. Something you might find in a nicer part of a large city. Has 14 modest beds (2 are used by the innkeeper and other staff), 14 nice beds and 4 very nice beds. Can feed and house 30 people easily. Needs 3 or 4 people to run efficiently.
1 fancy dining hall - 2 ss - 12000 gp
1 fancy kitchen - 1 ss - 12000 gp
2 fancy bath - 2 ss - 4000 gp
7 bedrooms - 7 ss - 4900 gp
7 fancy bedrooms (2nd floor) - 7 ss - 28000 gp
4 fancy bedroom suites (2nd floor) - 4 ss - 20000 gp
1st floor walls - 40% wood inner walls (free), 60% masonry outer walls (2500 per space) - 16500 gp
2nd floor walls - 40% wood inner walls (900 per space), 60% masonry outer walls (2500 per space) - 20460 gp
I would suggest A Magical Medieval Society : Western Europe from Expeditious Retreat Press. It covers this ground well, and more.
I'm bored:
Using the stronghold builder's guidebook, here are some building prices. Note that this assumes your new town is in (or very near) a temperate forest 50-100 miles from a large metropolis (for a total +0% to most prices and 10% off wooden walls that aren't already free). This also assumes that the site is neither particularly rich or poor in materials (other than wood) or defensible positions. A mid-level druid or cleric can potentially offer some spells that could save a bit of money.
Note that all builds are with wooden walls, single story, zero foundations. Doors, windows and locks unaccounted for. Everything you've designed is basically bargain basement (which is fine as far as it goes, but your bargain basement inn in still 6000gp). I know D&D economics are stupid broken, but nobody's building inns when they're 6000gp to start. Thats 600 week's income for the average person (12 years). That's like someone making $30,000 spending $360,000 to start a business. You're not saving that money up and you're not getting a loan for that much (note the above example of some guy saving for 17 years assumes he never marries or has children, who will need support as well, or buys anything of any consequence).
Also, 1 week per 10000gp gets built? Assuming average craftsmen (who can make DC20) and average build quality (DC10), each guy is building 30gp per week of structure. So 10000gp per week assumes a crew of 333 men, or 167 men since they'll all bump their DC by 10 points to build it faster. People will trot out Fabricate and Wall of Stone, but 9th level Wizards are supposed to be uncommon.
And as an extra note, in case someone still wants to claim that this is excessive, let me note that this small inn which costs 6,050gp to build, has the capacity to generate over 8,000gp per year in revenue. Pays for itself pretty quickly if it can stay busy and filled to capacity.Price those 10 beds at 5sp/night (for a small "only inn in town", treating barracks style beds as "common" makes sense), plus 2gp/night for the three open "good" beds is 11gp. The kitchen can feed 15 people at a time, but assuming they've got townsfolk coming in there's no reason not to think they can't be like any real life restaurant and turnover each of their tables twice in a night, so that's 30 common meals served for 3sp each, or another 9gp/night. Throw in 30 mugs of ale and five pitchers of wine and we've got another 2.5gp/night.
22.5gp/night times 365 nights/year = 8212.5gp in annual revenue. Not a bad business opportunity if you think you can keep it full (though that is of course the challenge for any business owner).
Revenue is not the same as profit. You need serving wenches and cooks, each of which will probably consume 520gp per year (so you're probably looking at at least 1100gp per year in wages, assuming 1 cook and 1 wench). Then you actually have to buy the food, buy the fuel for the fire, pay for lighting, taxes, maintenance...you'll be lucky if you get away with less than 2000gp per year in expenses. So you have to run at 25% capacity just to break even. Let's say you average 50%; so you made 2000gp (or so) profit on the year's activities. This lets you support yourself at a Wealthy lifestyle (120gp/month, 1440gp/year) with some left over (note he's note even supporting any family at that level, just himself).
However, I still don't see what that has to do with the actual cost of the building. Why does a kitchen cost 2000gp when a storage space cost 250gp? Yes, you need some chimney and some ironworks. Iron pots cost 8sp. A wooden chest costs 2gp. Kitchen utensils and furniture won't add up to much. Brick is fired clay (or you can use fieldstone for a chimney too). Neither of these substances are rare or ruinously expensive. When iron is 1sp per pound, how expensive is brick going to be? The same thing applies to basic bedrooms, which generally didn't have chimneys (thus warming pans under beds). A basic bed is going to be barely more than a chest, and a few pieces of rough furniture are thrown in. Suddenly bedrooms are 700gp! Those straw beds sure are expensive to account for the extra 450gp difference.
In no particular order:
Except for the cottage, everything is fully furnished including up to two doors and one shuttered window per stronghold space. Foundations are glossed over so count them as included in the cases where a foundation even makes sense. You'd probably want to buy a lock for a few of these buildings at 20-150 gp depending on what you have.
A kitchen includes a stove (I assume either stonework or iron, neither of which would be cheap; an iron stove would weight about 500 lbs; a stone one would require firebrick and fire proof grout), a pantry, pots and pans, a broom closet and a wash basin. Again, this isn't your kitchen. It's a cheap restaurant kitchen.
The storage space is just as big, but at this price, it doesn't even have shelves in it. The better version costs 1000 gp and includes a nice floor and plenty of shelf space.
The basic inn can be run by one innkeeper who's main job is cook during the day and clean when there's some time. The fancy inn needs at least 2 cooks and a server (the innkeeper, his wife and their daugther, for a stereotypical example) who probably all help with the cleaning.
Also note that this is still medieval fantasy. The construction of a new inn would be a rare event. I can easily see someone saving for 17 years for that kind of investment. Most people would buy or inherit an existing inn, which these prices don't cover. Plus, it's expensive to start a business. Your IRL example doesn't sound out of line. (Modern folks usually get a business loan. Medieval folks might too.)
As for marriage, the spouse would generate income too. In medieval times, even the kids would generate some income (probably the untrained 1 sp per day). You can cover an average cost of living with a -5 on a Profession check, though to be trained, you'd have at least a +1.
The 10000 gp per week is stated in the book, not calculated. It does include paying for as much man power as is generally practical and for spellcasting when that's practical and there are rules for the discount you'd get if you can cast them yourself, which can be significant. (Personally, I think the crafting times in the core book are ridiculously slow in many cases.)
Not to be rude, but it doesn't sound like you really read the book you're criticizing.
In no particular order:
A kitchen includes a stove (I assume either stonework or iron, neither of which would be cheap; an iron stove would weight about 500 lbs; a stone one would require firebrick and fire proof grout), a pantry, pots and pans, a broom closet and a wash basin. Again, this isn't your kitchen. It's a cheap restaurant kitchen.
"This rudimentary stone or wood floored kitchen centers around a fireplace or stove. It includes a pantry...<skip>...The kitchen includes pots and pans made of tin. A scullery provides storage for brooms and rags along with a basin for washing dishes and laundry."
There is no mention of an iron stove (except in Fancy Kitchen, specifically). A stove in this context is the simple three-stone support for putting cauldrons above a fire, or just a brick wall around a fire you can rest stuff on. From Wikipedia (stove):
"Pottery and other cooking vessels may be placed directly on an open fire, but setting the vessel on a support, as simple as a base of three stones, resulted in a stove. The three-stone stove is still widely used around the world. In some areas it developed into a U-shaped dried mud or brick enclosure with the opening in the front for fuel and air, sometimes with a second smaller hole at the rear."
Your basic kitchen is pretty basic; a fireplace, a washing tub and some pots and pans, plus some shelves and tables. None of this looks expensive enough to warrant a 2000gp price tag.
Look at the Basic Armory. It costs twice what a basic storage space does, and your extra 250gp gets you...racks for armor and weapons (again, a chest costs 2gp and is 25 lbs of wood and nails). A basic bath costs 400gp, and includes a 'wooden or metal tub' and a chamber pot.
But yet a smithy costs a mere 500gp, which includes a forge (non-trivial) an anvil and a full set of metalworking tools, and it's listed as having stone walls (and sometimes floor). A smithy should cost a heck of a lot more than a kitchen.
And then there's underground structures. They cost +10% over above ground ones and hey, hewn stone walls for free! Because mining stone is obviously only slightly more labor intensive than carpentry. 0_o
Really I could go on and on, instead I'll extoll the virtues of Land and Home Guide.
- price for land is listed. You can just buy land if you want! 100gp per acre for Rural property, 10gp per 5' square urban property (so your stronghold space is 160gp for a 20'x20' footprint in town).
- quality of land affects cost of said land.
- sections of building are done in 5' squares. There is a cost multiplier for quality of construction.
- cost and man hours per section are listed for both floors and walls (yes, it's more math)
- difference between interior and exterior walls in terms of cost and man hours
- roofing comes in variety from thatch to copper sheet
- furniture is listed by item and multiplied by quality
- rules for wells, landscaping, roads and bridges
- rules for agriculture
What it doesn't have is exotic wall materials (iron/mithril/living wood) or any of the magical stuff.
For comparison:
Peasant Hut (normal quality, single story, 20'x10', dirt/hay floor, mud/plaster walls and thatched roof, door, 3x 2 square foot shuttered windows, chimney and fireplace): 355.8 gp (unfurnished), 356 man hours to build (a lot of that cost and time is for the chimney and fireplace).
EDIT: +100gp for an acre of land to sit on.
The downside is it (obviously) takes more time to make these structures thanks to the detail level involved. But seriously, it's $1.50 on DriveThruRPG, you cannot go wrong.
And no, I am not affiliated with Dark Quest Games, just a fan of this product.
Ok, for more comparison, the 'small inn'. 7 stronghold spaces = 112 5' squares.
Each square has wood plank floors (1120gp, 560 man hours)
Each square has wooden shingle roofing (560gp, 1120 man hours)
Assuming a rough rectangle (70'x40'), that's 220' of exterior walls (880gp, 880 man hours)
Assuming 150% interior walls vs exterior (so 330') (990gp, 990 man hours)
So it's 2758gp (and man hours) for the basic structure. +300gp for 2 chimneys and 2 fireplaces (kitchen and main hall), +90gp for 6 doors, some shuttered windows (let's just say +20gp worth), 100gp for 20 chairs, 120gp for 10 single beds (expensive IMO), 60gp for 3 double beds, 50gp for 5 tables, 40gp for a bathing tub (on demand), 1 gp for 5 chamber pots, and let's say 500gp for miscellaneous stuff, plus 100gp for that rural acre it's sitting on.
4119gp. Okay, so that's only a 1/3 difference from Stronghold Builder's Guide, right? BUT, if you scale it up to exterior stone walls, you add 3520gp to the cost. Stronghold Builder's Guide? That would add 17500gp to the cost. Or add a second story? Wood walls don't go from free to 1000gp per section. They cost the same as the first floor.
The fact that you can buy land in a medieval setting is already off. Not that it's exactly inappropriate for a fantasy medieval game though.
Anyway, there may be no mention of what type of stove, but that doesn't automatically mean it's just three rocks on the floor. Again, the kitchen component is not a normal sized kitchen. If I had to guess, I'd say a modern kitchen is about half as big most of the time.
So, what would the two inns I detailed above cost in the Land and Home Guide?
Also, the stronghold builder's guidebook does differentiate interior and exterior walls. It recommends that even if they're made of the same stuff, the exterior walls should usually be thicker. See my fancy inn above where the exterior walls are masonry and the interior walls are wood. And you have to haul wood to the site, which is why you get a discount for being near the forest. (That said, I don't really know what the price difference between hewn stone and wood should be.)
For the smithy, while it may mention that it has stone walls, those aren't included in the price as far as I can tell.
Also also, I'm not sure I want anything as detailed as you make it sound. While it's nice to have prices for particular items when you want just one of them, I really don't want to try and make a complete inventory of all the little things you'd find in an inn.
I do agree that time and price should really be separated (for crafting in general). Roads, bridges and agriculture are nice additions (though not exactly in scope for the stronghold builder's guide).
Edit: Ninja'd, but again, your numbers are wrong. At 7 ss, it suggests 70% exterior walls, so it'd be 12250 gp for the masonry walls. (Also note that these are 1 foot thick, which may be different than the Land and Home Guide stone walls.)
Edit again: Graphing it out (roughly) I get something much closer to 50/50 for interior/exterior, mainly due to all the bedroom components which have the extra dividing wall.
Edit yet again: Actually, I didn't count the roof, which, I think, is counted in with one of the sets of walls. (I get 29 10' sections of interior, 26 10' sections of exterior and 36 10'x10' roof sections, in case anyone cares.) If you count those in with the exterior walls, it's about 68% exterior.
The fact that you can buy land in a medieval setting is already off. Not that it's exactly inappropriate for a fantasy medieval game though.
Land and Home Guide also has several pages on this very subject. And truth be told you could buy land in towns, and parts of Europe did have something called Allods, which were basically lands the nobles didn't own and they weren't part of the fief system.
Anyway, there may be no mention of what type of stove, but that doesn't automatically mean it's just three rocks on the floor. Again, the kitchen component is not a normal sized kitchen. If I had to guess, I'd say a modern kitchen is about half as big most of the time.
No, it's more akin to a firepit with something you can rest cookpots on top of - like a brick U-shaped wall with iron bars across it. The three rock system is a very simple version of that (but effective!). This will require a pretty big fireplace, a lot bigger than a modern stove would take up.
Also, the stronghold builder's guidebook does differentiate interior and exterior walls.
Yes, though the costs don't change. So your interior stone walls cost the same as your exterior stone walls. I guess my point is that some of this stuff is so expensive that the amount of hand-waving in the SBG really kills the pocketbook.
(That said, I don't really know what the price difference between hewn stone and wood should be.)
Well a lot of the time it's going to be fieldstone, at least for non-castle scale construction. Farmers would use the stones they get from clearing/plowing the land to build walls around their fields and even their houses in some cases.
Land and Home puts stone walls as 5x more expensive than wood, which seems fair. It doesn't so much cover castle construction, though it's fairly easy to extrapolate (multiple wall thicknesses).
Also also, I'm not sure I want anything as detailed as you make it sound. While it's nice to have prices for particular items when you want just one of them, I really don't want to try and make a complete inventory of all the little things you'd find in an inn.
That's a valid complaint, but actually getting furnishing prices lets you ballpark things fairly easily.
Edit: Ninja'd, but again, your numbers are wrong. At 7 ss, it suggests 70% exterior walls, so it'd be 12250 gp for the masonry walls. (Also note that these are 1 foot thick, which may be different than the Land and Home Guide stone walls.)
Which is still more than 3x more expensive than the L&HG. What really burns me in the SBG is how wood walls go from free (I guess rolled into the basic cost of a space?) on the ground floor to 1000gp per space on the second floor. Either wood magically becomes more expensive at altitude or the carpentry guild has a serious elevation tax. It's as if the designers realized that stuff was a bit too expensive and said "Well, if they only build one story we'll make the walls free. If they're made of wood. And it's a Tuesday." ^_^ Since most of these things come with wood floor you can't really argue that it's an extra flooring expense...
I think it's more likely that, as you say, the wood walls (and quite a few other details) are rolled into the basic price, and the 1000 gp for wooden walls is the difference between that and the price for wooden walls at elevation. (Although you could argue that it's an extra flooring expense, since a free wooden floor is likely too thin to support the weight of all the furniture without the dirt/foundation under it.)
The interior and exterior walls may be the same price, but it'd be rare for them to be made of the same thing at the same thicknesses. (Thicker walls for castles are an example a page or two later.) Also, hewn stone means a solid, smooth wall. Masonry is for stones put together and isn't free underground. (Hewn stone above ground often comes from the Wall of Stone spell, as best as I can tell.)
As much as I know you are trying to help, you do realize you've strayed way WAY past the rules of the PFRPG game and into 3PP (WotC) territory right?
As you said yourself, there's no answers in the core material. Both the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook and the Land and Home Guide do offer answers, and good ones. I doubt many GMs would have any problem with anything in either book being overpowered or underpriced.
Plus, as the developers say, Pathfinder is designed to be compatible with most 3.x material, which would include the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. So no, not way way past.
As you said yourself, there's no answers in the core material. Both the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook and the Land and Home Guide do offer answers, and good ones. I doubt many GMs would have any problem with anything in either book being overpowered or underpriced.
Plus, as the developers say, Pathfinder is designed to be compatible with most 3.x material, which would include the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook. So no, not way way past.
At which point a switch in forum would be suggested. Advice, Suggestion/Houserules, or probably more appropriate given the last several posts, Conversions.
True I suppose, but not something I can help with. :)
If you want your kitchen to be 3 stones, a fire and table, you buy the Basic Workspace (500gp) for Profession (Cook). If you want something a bit better kitted out, you buy a Kitchen. Depends how cheap you want your inn and what you want to serve.
Your really minimal inn costs about 1800gp and has 4-5 cheap rooms to rent. (that's one basic tavern, one basic workspace and one servant's quarters, with the innkeeper and possibly a server using one of the rooms)
Epic thread necromancy.
Also, Downtime rules supersede SHB by a good margin. There are some missing bits. If those don't get picked up by a 3PP I might see if I can crunch some rules up myself.
Epic thread necromancy.
Also, Downtime rules supersede SHB by a good margin. There are some missing bits. If those don't get picked up by a 3PP I might see if I can crunch some rules up myself.
Fair point on the necro, I just found the thread via google search. I tend not to mind a necro on a high google result just because such threads have moved beyond just the context of the thread in its time and into informational resources. An update doesn't hurt.
And I totally agree on the downtime rules, they are pretty well done. As with anything there are things to gripe about, but its a solid and worthwhile effort.
As I understand it the general rule on necromancy is "mention it, but it's okay". Hence the mention.
Don't get me wrong (I'm just saying this, I don't think you did), I love the SHB, and I love the Downtime rules. In my mind, SHB went too far on making things cost "adventuring money", and Downtime went too far on abstracting construction.
For example, SHB lets you choose the wall materials, as well as different levels of luxury in each ss, and charges you through the nose for even the simplest construction, whereas UCam has rooms for a relatively tiny quantity of money, but very little guidance about what your building is made from, or how much "bling" you choose to have inside the room.
My ideal set of rules hits the middle ground, with "realistic" basic room options that are affordable to non-adventurers, and then the option to choose different materials and contents to push the prices up so that wealthy characters (kings, rich merchants, noblemen, and adventurers) can spend an appreciable fraction of their wealth on a place to call home.
Couple this with some additional downtime rules around constructing a building away from an existing settlement and you've covered both the people who want a fortified manor on the outskirts of town, and the folks who want to build a castle in the middle of nowhere.
Hmm... I spy a project to get my teeth into. Might give it a shot after my next couple of reviews are finished.