Gold vs BP

[IceniQueen]

My players want to start a business in a town. But the issue is, how much does it cost? There are tons of rules on building, but it involves BP.

How much is a BP in gold? I saw a rule once on a site, but cannot locate it and the cost seems astronomical (An Inn was like 10,000GP which would mean, no one could ever build an Inn.

So, what is the cost in gold of 1 BP be it an Inn, a Blacksmith, Weaponsmith, trader house, tavern, brothel? etc...

[SheepishEidolon]

You can find it in the old official wiki or the book, Ultimate Campaign:

Ultimate Campaign, page 204 wrote:

Build points don’t have a precise exchange rate to gold pieces because they don’t represent exact amounts of specific resources. For example, you can’t really equate the productivity of a blacksmith with that of a stable, as their goods are used for different things and aren’t produced at the same rate, but both of them contribute to a kingdom’s overall economy. In general, 1 BP is worth approximately 4,000 gp; use this value to get a sense of how costly various kingdom expenditures are. In practice, it is not a simple matter to convert one currency to the other, but there are certain ways for your PC to spend gp to increase the kingdom’s BP or withdraw BP and turn them into gold for your character to spend.

If the player can't afford it, the "Wealthy Sponsor" section might help (and result in further adventure).

[IceniQueen]

Thank you. The party recently found a "lost" and forgotten tomb of a king. They have more than enough gold to start a business. But was looking for the what a BP to GP was as I could not find it

[Mark Hoover 330]

Another way to go with starting a business might be the Downtime rules, if they are working out of an existing settlement instead of building their own from scratch. Consequently you could just use the costs for developing the individual businesses from these rules; buying an "inn" building outright costs 2,130 GP or the players can work on crafting it from scratch themselves over several weeks for half that (and several skill checks along the way).

Business Idea:

Are they building a new settlement right at the tomb? That'd be super cool! Like, they construct their village directly over the tomb, make a secret entrance to the dungeon through the inn, sell admission to the tomb to potential "adventurer" NPCs for a profit, while the PCs themselves slowly work to expand the tomb dungeon adding their own personal touches to it, constructs and traps that deal non-lethal damage, special puzzles hiding PC-created treasure.

Actually, that'd be a fun way for PCs to reuse or repurpose gear looted from lower CR foes. Think about it; a party of APL 6 might still be encountering mixed groups of foes with, say, a few bugbears or a goblin shaman bolstering it's ranks. Well, after the battle they've likely got a few spears, maybe some broken arrows, and some mundane armor, shields and so forth.

So you go down into the "dungeon" below your inn, build a couple display racks, then hang the armor and gear on these in a kind of "treasure room." Use some minor spells or cantrips to mend them, clean them, and perhaps give them some new symbols or design elements. The party wizard could donate some cheap, level 1 spell scrolls and perhaps one of the pieces of armor could be upgraded with the Masterwork Transformation spell.

Charge young, level 1 NPCs 100 GP each to enter the tomb and see if any of them can find and recover the "Lost Armaments of Azerveldt" or whatever. Maps to common areas of the dungeon cost extra; the adventurers can also purchase scroll spells from the PC wizard, or healing from any PC capable of delivering it... for even more additional fees of course.

[Hugo Rune]

For a one-off building, you might be better using the room rules to determine the cost.

[Coidzor]

Dungeon Keeping as a tourist trap/amusement park is definitely an interesting twist on the concept.

IceniQueen wrote:

Thank you. The party recently found a "lost" and forgotten tomb of a king. They have more than enough gold to start a business. But was looking for the what a BP to GP was as I could not find it

Remember that the BP to gold conversion rate can be lower when the kingdom size is small. BP rewards that are parallel to increasing WBL are also pretty safe.