So, I will try and keep this brief. We are at a point in the campaign I am playing right now, where us, as players, have a three year span of time to build wealth, renown, etc, until the next part of the story kicks off.
I got married in-game, and her city was destroyed. I am rebuilding it. There were some survivors, 200 my DM said. 120 of which are miners. The DM has allowed me to gain 1gp per miner, blah blah blah, which means at the end of these three years, my 8th level Elf Ranger will have 131,400gp. That's a lot. Just from the mine. Now, I am not really looking to get super rich, but am rather enjoying the thought of having my own city of now, about 1,000 people. I want to plant farms, build a mill, shops, etc... build a real village, you know?
My questions are.... how the heck do I determine how much gp I get per farm, and how often? Shops, etc.... I don't know how to calculate any of this, and neither does my DM, so... if I can make sense of this, it will save a lot of time while playing. Help me build the city of Underhill.
Figure out what percentage you want as a tax rate on your citizens. How many of your citizens are productive? Kids don't provide wealth.
You can earn half your Profession check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the profession's daily tasks, how to supervise helpers, and how to handle common problems. You can also answer questions about your Profession. Basic questions are DC 10, while more complex questions are DC 15 or higher.
You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning half your check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the craft's daily tasks, how to supervise untrained helpers, and how to handle common problems. (Untrained laborers and assistants earn an average of 1 silver piece per day.)
So the number of productive citizens times 50 (everyone has an off week or two) times 16 (a nice average skill result for villagers) times 1/2 will give you a total income for a year. Figure 300 productive citizens, the others are dependents (kids, elderly, family caretakers etc.).
So 300x50x16/2=120,000 gp a year income. A tax rate of 1/3 gives you an additional 40,000 gp a year.
But you will also have expenses, guards, etc. Guards will be about 100gp each per year, plus 150gp for their leader. Any other people you need to hire will also subtract from that. (A volunteer fire department should cost about 200gp for the year. They would be paid per fire.) I'd figure 3,000 to 5,000gp in expenses a year would be fair.
Those were fast responses! Thanks so much guys! Though, in the link to the Kingdom building, I noticed it is all in "hexes" which are about 95 square miles. My township is not nearly so expansive. How do you all think this will affect how many shops, etc I can have, or is this DM discrection?
A town of a few thousand will only cover a couple of square miles, farms to support them 10 or 20 square miles.
The Kingdom building rules are for building Kingdoms not little towns.
As for shops, unless you want something unusual or a lot of something, it will likely be there. I would say anything under 15BP from the Kingdom buildings Kingdom Turn Sequence and the Foundry would be available. Anything more than that you would likely have to pay for.
So, the DM has changed things rather substantially.... now there are only 200 people, half of which are miners. Per my monetary gain, he has told me that each miner will end up mining 36gp a month from the mine, they keep 10gp for their living, I get 26gp, per month, per miner.
So it works out to 26x100. 26gp per miner, times 100, which is the number of miners I have. this umber is 2600. So I make 2600gp from an entire silver mine, per month. Then, we take this number, and times it by 12, which is the number of months in a year and we get 31,200gp for a whole year. The DM has instituted a 3 year gap, so we then take 31,200 and times it by 3 and we get 93,600gp.
That is a lot of gold, especially for a level 8 character. However, I can't help but feel I am somehow being slighted... I mean... it's a whole freaking mine. granted yes, you don't always have ore to extract, but 100 professionals, doing the same thing for 10 hours a day... a chunk of silver ore would likely weigh ten pounds or so, how many chunks in a day? etc, etc... perhaps I'm trying to make it too complicated or something, I don't know... maybe I'm just being an ungrateful player too.
What do you guys think?
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not slighted, in fact that's generous, far too generous. Your profit would probably be more like 10-20% rather than 60-80%, especially without modern technology, AND since you have to rebuild the whole town.
for instance:
1. how are you turning the raw silver ore into money? You realize, turning silver ore into silver metal probably involves washing off all of it with mercury (causing insanity and death to your workers) among other processes, until you finally get silver.
2. speaking of which, how are you keeping your workers alive all year? mining is hazardous, not all 100 will make it to the end of the year. Free cleric services? ("Free" for the miners, "costly" for the owner) (this does not even count the miners you will have to execute for being thieves)
3. Do you have a giant press to mint it? or just turning it into bars. Either way that is extra expense and workers and buildings.
4. Where are you keeping all that silver? There are no banks. Is it in a pile in your basement? Do you even have a basement (if the town was razed)?
5. How are you protecting all the bars until you can ship them out to wherever, let alone all your personal bars? paying miners or others to be guards? Are you ready to fight off the brigands /warbands that hear about the re-opened mine and how it is barely protected?
6. How are you shipping those silver bars out? If your new town is flooded with silver, the silver is then pretty worthless ("I got a pile of silver in my backyard, I don't need your silver, I need chickens though") unless you can ship it out far and wide to others, in return for ... what? more metal? or builders, contractors, services (neighboring fiefdoms won't want to give up so many tradesmen either)
7. How are all these miners going to eat? As you said, you have to rebuild the town. if you don't rebuild things fast, they may leave to find work elsewhere. Of course building mills, taverns, homes, costs, and attracting workers to do it costs, and providing those workers with food let alone pay, money won't help when there is no food :)
8. How much time will it be to ramp up all the processes, it's not like they'll be pumping out the silver on day 1, not without a plan for all the above, rails and cars built to move the ore, buildings and specialists to turn it into metal, others to stamp it or make it into bars, blacksmiths to provide tools and fix them, stonesmiths and carpenters to work on buildings and shoring up mining tunnels, etc. All that has to be in place before you can make 1 silver coin worth of profit.
etc, etc.As you can see, there are a million things to think of. Those are only the things I could think over over 10 minutes. Look at modern mines and how much profit they make, and that is using efficient modern technology. You'd be making less.
Now the easy way is to just fiat all that above (and the hundreds of other things no one has thought of) and say you get to keep 20%.
It seems the main benefit will not be material wealth (though that should still be a lot) , but rather your character would be the leader of a community, and if he is good then it would be a loyal community, which can come in handy.
And a mine that consistantly produces will draw a lot of people, of all types. Theres a lot of gaming potential here. Seems like a waste to reduce it down to a free paycheck for a player.
not slighted, in fact that's generous, far too generous. Your profit would probably be more like 10-20% rather than 60-80%, especially without modern technology, AND since you have to rebuild the whole town.
for instance:
1. how are you turning the raw silver ore into money? You realize, turning silver ore into silver metal probably involves washing off all of it with mercury (causing insanity and death to your workers) among other processes, until you finally get silver.
2. speaking of which, how are you keeping your workers alive all year? mining is hazardous, not all 100 will make it to the end of the year. Free cleric services? ("Free" for the miners, "costly" for the owner) (this does not even count the miners you will have to execute for being thieves)
3. Do you have a giant press to mint it? or just turning it into bars. Either way that is extra expense and workers and buildings.
4. Where are you keeping all that silver? There are no banks. Is it in a pile in your basement? Do you even have a basement (if the town was razed)?
5. How are you protecting all the bars until you can ship them out to wherever, let alone all your personal bars? paying miners or others to be guards? Are you ready to fight off the brigands /warbands that hear about the re-opened mine and how it is barely protected?
6. How are you shipping those silver bars out? If your new town is flooded with silver, the silver is then pretty worthless ("I got a pile of silver in my backyard, I don't need your silver, I need chickens though") unless you can ship it out far and wide to others, in return for ... what? more metal? or builders, contractors, services (neighboring fiefdoms won't want to give up so many tradesmen either)
7. How are all these miners going to eat? As you said, you have to rebuild the town. if you don't rebuild things fast, they may leave to find work elsewhere. Of course building mills, taverns, homes, costs, and attracting workers to do it costs, and providing those workers with food let alone pay, money...
1. The Gm has granted that the foundry stay intact.
2. Another PC is infact, a cleric, and has made himself Bishop of an extremely nearby town.3. Oversight I guess? Or could say the foundry?
4. I keep it in my bag of holding! lol. Again, oversight. But, the Barbarian in the party happens to have profession:Carpenter, and has been building buildings for free. THe village is located in a very ideal spot, right next to a forest, and many streams, with it's back to the mountains.
5. Previously mentioned PC who made himself Bishop of nearby town, has supplied many Templar-esque gaurds, who are level 4 fighters basically. For free. The other PC pays them for their services actually. It costs me nothing.
6. Shipping could be simple horse and carriage? Risky, due to bandits, etc, but everything is pretty nearby, so I'm ok with that.
7. I have built farms and fisheries with previous wealth, before the whole mining thing happened. Also, lots of hunting and fishing lol.
And a mine that consistantly produces will draw a lot of people, of all types. Theres a lot of gaming potential here. Seems like a waste to reduce it down to a free paycheck for a player.
I actually agree with you. I am trying to get more action going on, and expand the little village am in charge of. I think there could be some really neat dynamics.
Berti had a point, but you had several good responses. Having appropriate backup from party members is always a beneficial aspect. A few things I might recommend.
1) Have your Barbarian friend alternate between building homes and training local youth to fight. His style might not be suited for your average fighter, but training any willing young men (or women) into a make-shift militia would both allow you to provide some measure of self-defense for the town, and possibly let you send some of those Templar-esque guards to guard your carriage of silver during transit, with appropriate donations to the church as recompense for their services.
2) Consider turning a branch of the mine that is no longer in use and is close to the surface into a smelting area. Buy the requisite materials with personal cash and see if you can't lure someone capable from a nearby town to do the work. Pay them for their time, (Hireling, Trained is usually 3 sp a day, pay someone 5-10 a day, and you should have their loyalty) and set them to setting the silver into proper bars. Maybe get a few. This will cut down on your base level of income, but it will make trading the silver a lot more beneficial than if you were to trade the raw ore.
3) Remember that your GM is still being fairly generous. A great deal of time while mining is not spent on actual ore, but in digging new tunnels and searching for said ore. Usually most veins of ore can be cleaned out in a matter of weeks, and then many more weeks are spent in search of another. The fact that you're being given a mine that steadily produces silver is a blessing.
4) Storage, much like the smelting, could be done with a small branch of the mine. This also lets you dual-purpose the guards to be guarding both the entrance to the mine itself, and the storage, so that way you don't have to divide your forces too thinly.
5) Keep the bishop happy at all costs. Even as another PC, he himself may not mind making trips to come heal your people all the time, but the members of his clergy and the town where he is may take offense to him constantly being called away. Appropriate donations to his church for the "blessings" he is bestowing upon your town will serve the dual purpose of invigorating his community and placating his clergy.
6) Mind the cost of upkeep. Even if the work your barbarian is free, the materials are not, even if the cost is only setting men to work cutting down some local trees (and make sure you aren't pissing off any druids/treants). You should likely assume a good 15-20% of your profit is going into the cost of various materials, wood, coal, steel, etc, both for the new homes and for the mines. You should also keep in mind that you are effectively charging the miners a 73% tax on the product of the mines. If you aren't the owner, this might cause some issues. If you in fact own the mine, then it would be more apt to say that it's not what they get to keep, but rather what you are paying them for their services. If you advertise that you're paying 10 gold a month (roughly the usual 3 silver/day cost of a trained hireling), you would likely be able to attract a great deal more miners in a matter of months, especially if you promise them a home to come to.
7) Also, consider spending about another 10-20% of your income in hiring additional workers and attracting new members of your community, and on simply expanding/improving the town as a whole. Your barbarian may be building homes, but he can only do so much alone, and the more you spend on better materials, the greater the town will become and the more the people will approve of your leadership. Overall, you should likely spend about 40-60% of your wealth on the town itself, before spending anything else on pet projects or self gain.
not slighted, in fact that's generous, far too generous. Your profit would probably be more like 10-20% rather than 60-80%, especially without modern technology, AND since you have to rebuild the whole town.
for instance:
1. how are you turning the raw silver ore into money? You realize, turning silver ore into silver metal probably involves washing off all of it with mercury (causing insanity and death to your workers) among other processes, until you finally get silver.
1. Using Mercury in Silver mining is a very labor intensive process, likely these 100 miners are mining silver that needs little processing, just smelting, to get the silver. (Potosí, Bolivia had a population of 160,000 while the silver was being mined in the 1600s. Effectively the city and surrounding population was being used as slave labor.)
So my GM and I got all the Silver Mine thing situated. It's fairly lucrative. Killed a dragon all by myself, got 100k gold and a few magic items anyway. Was intense fight. I almost died.
So I built a good few shops in my village, and an Inn, some farms, etc. I can't seem to figure out how to determine how much each business acrrues, nor how often.
I read in the Ultimate Campaign guide where it did say that the capital gained from each business already takes into account payment to its workers.... but how often?