My players want to buy land in the Mwangi Expanse and I realized I have no idea what to charge them. Also wondering what peoples opinion on land values in Golarion are? Per acre what would you charge a player character for : 1.Undeveloped Jungle.
2. A parcel of Taldoran farmland 10 miles from the capital.
3. A wooded hill in rural Ustalav.
I've also noticed that there are no guidelines for building costs like in D&D 2e and 3-3.5. Any suggestions?
A- use the guidelines from 3.5
B- make up some number that uses the party's total wealth, and add 50%. This gives you time to think about it and you get to see how determined you are.
C- ignore all my advice here because I am concerned that it will somehow be a game-breaker.
D- run with it, the game is meant to be fun and I've not personally heard of layers doing this before.
E- house and land around here seems to cost about 10 years average wages. Don't let the players use this argument with something like, "and farmers only earn about 1gp per week."
There are actually a number of cities and settlements listed in The Mwangi expanse section of the Inner Sea World Guide :-). I am also operating under the assumption that the Cheliaxian empire have interests there and likely have set up Governors for the place much like The british empire in 18th and 19th century India.
ok, now we're getting somewhere. I guess land in Mwangi ought to be cheap if bought(say 10 gold per acre?) Now how about opinions on my other two examples in the OP?
I personally imagine that the land in Taldor would be in the order of 100 times he value of the land in Mwangi; the land in Ustulav would be 10 times the land in Mwangi.
whew! 1000 gp per acre in Taldor within reasonable distance of the city?
That's incredibly expensive considering how little land an acre is!
What are they going to use the land for? An acre may well be too much for what they want.
Yeah I suppose but my thought is that successful adventurers either are or should be fabulously rich according even to the wbl guidelines if compared to the average skilled laborer. To me an adventurer throughout his career should be wealthy enough to easily rival lower to mid nobility and possibly more, if per say an average Earl or baron has a total net worth of say 500k-800k gold? So why shouldn't a player be able to purchase, develop and profit from increasingly large tracts of property if they desire? I mean these folks are reaping the rewards of a life of the highest risk and hopefully making enough gold to support several families doing so right?
To clarify, if a characters net worth equals his entry on the WBL chart.
@ oberonviking, well one player wanted to harvest and sell timber and perhaps start a small outpost/village, however this isn't an uncommon theme we've run the gamut in D&D from independent stronghold to city brothl to Fighter school to mining camp. So to answer your question they are looking for means to both further the story AND earn some money towards better gear and eventually retirement(possibly as future prestigious NPC's).
pretty sure one gets that, the other often doesn't care though. Godd point.
@ oberonviking, well one player wanted to harvest and sell timber and perhaps start a small outpost/village, however this isn't an uncommon theme we've run the gamut in D&D from independent stronghold to city brothl to Fighter school to mining camp. So to answer your question they are looking for means to both further the story AND earn some money towards better gear and eventually retirement(possibly as future prestigious NPC's).
That sounds great!
Do you want arbitrary values, or are you thinking more about how much it should hurt?I imagine that is the players' perspective - if the land outside of Taldor is too expensive they'll ask about land another 5-10 miles away...?
In the middle ages land was not purchased for cash. Actually owning land was a privilege of the nobility. You paid for it not only with cash in the form of taxes, but also with service. A commoner could rent the land but to actually own it means you are nobility. Now this is more for "Civilized" area's, not wilderness. A lot of land was also considered property of the crown, including most forests. Think of the original Robin Hood movie where the first crime Robin committed was killing the "Kings Deer".
If you are in a civilized area you would probably need to purchase a grant of nobility to actually own land. Now if you just want to setup a business then you will owe rent every year. In a wilderness it is pretty much you can have anything you can defend.
Most of the time the service owed by nobility was military service especially in times of war. Depending on the size of the land you were required to provide a certain number of troops when the king needed them. You were also required to attend the king at other times.
This will also give you a lot of story hooks. When you are a noble and the crown "requests your service" you do what they say.
Not thinking it should HURT the PC's, just looking for an objective, non-biased set of land values to charge them. Sounds like many items factor into the cost and doing deeds that benefit a country or detriment a country could effect the price.Also distance from a city and what type of government is in place.
Don't forget that if you're in the Expanse then the PCs are also going to have to deal with the local tribes and their ownership of the land no matter what the Sargavian government might allow them to buy.
Using the Pathfinder Factions book combined with Pathfinder Society Guide book, you can have them do faction missions to gain prestige points and they could use those prestige points to purchase land holdings. The faction guide recommends 3-5 prestige points per level, while in PFS it's up to 6 per level. A townhouse costs around 20 prestige points and a country manor costs 30 (if I remember right, could be wrong).
Without that, and specifically for the Mwangi Expanse, if my players want to do this, I would make it completely free. All they have to do is claim it and protect it (and perhaps pay for building supplies if they want any materials that are not local). They'll have to deal with wandering monsters who go into their claimed holdings. They'll have to deal with a local tribe who claims it is sacred land, or perhaps a Taldorian Nobleman who claims the land is already his (maybe his private hunting grounds). Any buildings or modification to the land (such as a small farm) will require daily or weekly upkeep, so if the players are off on a mission, they'll either have to realize that their lands may be overgrown or house might be broken into while they are away, or they'll have to pay to staff people.
You should have them contact the local authorities and barter with them. The GP value is only a singular consideration, and I don't think the most important one. This is an RPG after all, and the negotiation should be. And, possibly, oh I don't know, maybe a... quest? That possibly furthers the aims of both the party and (one of) the current claimant(s) on the land?