And I'm going to be 'giving' them a town (Short of a TPK in the dungeon they're in.)
Since i'm intending to do a 'continual campaign' instead of a 'Welp modules over, go home folks' and this town is one that's canonically 'destroyed' (Thundertree, near Neverwinter) and my ultimate goal is to make this sort of a place they can call a 'home base' but I'm also wanting it to be player driven. And I will admit some things on this site are hard to find, even if you do own the book the item is/should be in. So I'm asking my fellow dungeon-masters since I'm having trouble locating it myself, and I'm sure not everything has a 'canon' price.
I know they exist but after 3 days of looking, I just can't seem to find it. But I'm looking for things such as the price of wall materials, building types, furnishing prices, etc, so they can build the town as much or as little as they like, without me either over/under pricing things when it comes to it.
Including inviting craftsfolk, so price of forges, etc.
Yeah it is a bit of a mess. Strongholds and Followers is a good guide. Otherwise you have to look at a few different places in the PHB and DMG.
You look at skilled tradesmans wages and take a guess at apprentice wages. You look at the trade goods section (1pb of iron is 2sp for example) and take some guesses. I recently did this for fixing up the house as part of a Saltmarsh campaign. You also factor in freight costs, markups and extra payments for rush jobs. Even so, building a whole house by experienced craftsmen is only a few hundred gold. Extreme for a commoner but trivial for the amounts you are talking about.
Lets face it though - the group is going to want to have a castle or similar which is where strongholds and followers comes in. The other option is just to lay out a few options for the players and let them pick. We aren't going for realism here after all. So you get a large house for 500gp. A small castle for 5000. Double the castle size for an extra 2000gp, add in turrents for 1000gp each, ballista are 300gp etc etc.
That is my advice anyway - don't go too far down the rabbit hole there is no definitive answer in the core books. Handwave it, look at Strongholds or try something on the DMsGuild. Save yourself a headache.
@Lyx this is mostly preparatory, and was part of a plan I had when introducing a players background characters. Depending on their choices they would either get 0, 5k, or 10k (and change in the last two) if they explored as the 'backstory npc's had made some bank. This I feel will give them the choice of not helping the town they were late in saving get back on it's feet, which would ultimately sour them in a sort of ... 'Fallout 3 karma' way, or they can assist the town to some degree, at the cost of their own expenses.
I doubt they'll choose the former, as atleast two in the group are playing the pious but not strict caring types. Ultimately it gives them the freedom to seek to help those they already failed once, at a financial loss, but gaining in 'good karma' the more they go into it, or sitting on a fat stack of 10k gold and decking themselves out for a long time, to atleast until they posses 10 adamantined weapons! (Obviously I wouldn't allow there to be enough materials in any one town but you get the point.) but perhaps that would lead to some bad 'juju' heading their way in the future for their greed.
Last night my players bought a house in Saltmarsh for 3200gp (original asking price was 3500gp) after they collected the 10,000gp bounty from Salvage Operation.
Keep in mind that prices in the books are just a starting point. Housing in towns may only be affordable for the wealthy for example but building a one room cabin in the woods where the land might be free could be much cheaper. Personally, I don't find it worth the effort going through the details of trying to figure out how much it would cost to build something decent - unless the players are really into book keeping - it isn't worth the time for either the players or the DM. Keep in mind though that costs can vary by 50-100% or more depending on supply/demand and the local economy.
In my case, since it was a bigger town, with a council and organized structure of governance, I decided that an organized method of property transfer, land registration and taxation made sense (though I haven't mentioned the taxes to the players yet :) ... they didn't ask :) ).
In your case, I don't know the nature of the town where they would be setting up shop ... so most of the decisions would be up to you. The PHB lists skilled labour at 2gp/day and unskilled at 2sp/day. However, a master craftsman can likely charge more and an apprentice could be 1/2 the cost of a skilled labourer. There may also be guilds of various sorts setting prices or running a monopoly so that prices are elevated. However, I would likely just go with setting costs for entire buildings at a substantial amount (500-10k gold or more) depending on the type of building.
You could just say it's going to cost roughly XX (about 5000 as there are ruins to work with) gold to repair the damage done to the town and install a small keep.
Give the party some side quests related to the neighborhood - clearing out threats or establishing safe trade routes, somesuch. They can live in temporary housing in the town while it is being worked on. The fact that it is labor intensive, will put a population in the area. Some enterprising individual(s) will create a tavern or two. There would be a general goods store and black smith as such services are a necessity to groups of laborers.
After a few quests nearby, have their fame cause somebody to look for them and send them on a long campaign farther away. When they return months later, there can be real progress on the town - reinforced palisade, actual stone watch tower, permanent structures around town. Personal manor for the PCs.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Make sure micromanaging their home base is something they are interested in. Having your own place to stay as a keep, house, mansion etc. is perfectly natural but being in charge of a whole town and influencing it's economy, taxes, making sure people want to live there etc. is a bit further from your typical "D&D experience".
I know that it turned me away from some Assassins Creed games - instead of being an assassin, I was supposed to choose lumber for my mansion.
They may want to hire a "city manager" and periodically deposit some funds from time to time and just accept free roof and meals.
Oh it'll mostly be background-noise. Basically I'm seeking to create a place where they can eventually have their own true hub. Don't wanna go to neverwinter to adamantine your stuff? hire or find a smith and convince him to join your cause. it won't be 'determine his destiny, exactly what he makes' and so on.
Those can give you some suggestions for how much being an in-world property developer should cost, but if it was me as the DM, I wouldn't do a lot of fiddly accounting for every brick I would just let their creativity run wild until I thought it had gone far enough and then tell them they had run out of money (but maybe could get more, if they did this little adventure).
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And I'm going to be 'giving' them a town (Short of a TPK in the dungeon they're in.)
Since i'm intending to do a 'continual campaign' instead of a 'Welp modules over, go home folks' and this town is one that's canonically 'destroyed' (Thundertree, near Neverwinter) and my ultimate goal is to make this sort of a place they can call a 'home base' but I'm also wanting it to be player driven. And I will admit some things on this site are hard to find, even if you do own the book the item is/should be in. So I'm asking my fellow dungeon-masters since I'm having trouble locating it myself, and I'm sure not everything has a 'canon' price.
I know they exist but after 3 days of looking, I just can't seem to find it. But I'm looking for things such as the price of wall materials, building types, furnishing prices, etc, so they can build the town as much or as little as they like, without me either over/under pricing things when it comes to it.
Including inviting craftsfolk, so price of forges, etc.
Occassional Dungeon Master.
You might find Strongholds & Followers useful.
"Ignorance is bliss, and you look absolutely miserable."
Yeah it is a bit of a mess. Strongholds and Followers is a good guide. Otherwise you have to look at a few different places in the PHB and DMG.
You look at skilled tradesmans wages and take a guess at apprentice wages. You look at the trade goods section (1pb of iron is 2sp for example) and take some guesses. I recently did this for fixing up the house as part of a Saltmarsh campaign. You also factor in freight costs, markups and extra payments for rush jobs. Even so, building a whole house by experienced craftsmen is only a few hundred gold. Extreme for a commoner but trivial for the amounts you are talking about.
Lets face it though - the group is going to want to have a castle or similar which is where strongholds and followers comes in. The other option is just to lay out a few options for the players and let them pick. We aren't going for realism here after all. So you get a large house for 500gp. A small castle for 5000. Double the castle size for an extra 2000gp, add in turrents for 1000gp each, ballista are 300gp etc etc.
That is my advice anyway - don't go too far down the rabbit hole there is no definitive answer in the core books. Handwave it, look at Strongholds or try something on the DMsGuild. Save yourself a headache.
Thank you both for answering. I will give this a look.
Occassional Dungeon Master.
@Lyx this is mostly preparatory, and was part of a plan I had when introducing a players background characters. Depending on their choices they would either get 0, 5k, or 10k (and change in the last two) if they explored as the 'backstory npc's had made some bank. This I feel will give them the choice of not helping the town they were late in saving get back on it's feet, which would ultimately sour them in a sort of ... 'Fallout 3 karma' way, or they can assist the town to some degree, at the cost of their own expenses.
I doubt they'll choose the former, as atleast two in the group are playing the pious but not strict caring types. Ultimately it gives them the freedom to seek to help those they already failed once, at a financial loss, but gaining in 'good karma' the more they go into it, or sitting on a fat stack of 10k gold and decking themselves out for a long time, to atleast until they posses 10 adamantined weapons! (Obviously I wouldn't allow there to be enough materials in any one town but you get the point.) but perhaps that would lead to some bad 'juju' heading their way in the future for their greed.
Occassional Dungeon Master.
Last night my players bought a house in Saltmarsh for 3200gp (original asking price was 3500gp) after they collected the 10,000gp bounty from Salvage Operation.
Keep in mind that prices in the books are just a starting point. Housing in towns may only be affordable for the wealthy for example but building a one room cabin in the woods where the land might be free could be much cheaper. Personally, I don't find it worth the effort going through the details of trying to figure out how much it would cost to build something decent - unless the players are really into book keeping - it isn't worth the time for either the players or the DM. Keep in mind though that costs can vary by 50-100% or more depending on supply/demand and the local economy.
In my case, since it was a bigger town, with a council and organized structure of governance, I decided that an organized method of property transfer, land registration and taxation made sense (though I haven't mentioned the taxes to the players yet :) ... they didn't ask :) ).
In your case, I don't know the nature of the town where they would be setting up shop ... so most of the decisions would be up to you. The PHB lists skilled labour at 2gp/day and unskilled at 2sp/day. However, a master craftsman can likely charge more and an apprentice could be 1/2 the cost of a skilled labourer. There may also be guilds of various sorts setting prices or running a monopoly so that prices are elevated. However, I would likely just go with setting costs for entire buildings at a substantial amount (500-10k gold or more) depending on the type of building.
where in the crazy did your group get 10k gp?!?!?
Rogue Shadow, the DM (and occasional) PC with schemes of inventive thinking
I know, right?
Hmmm...
Rogue Shadow, the DM (and occasional) PC with schemes of inventive thinking
You could just say it's going to cost roughly XX (about 5000 as there are ruins to work with) gold to repair the damage done to the town and install a small keep.
Give the party some side quests related to the neighborhood - clearing out threats or establishing safe trade routes, somesuch. They can live in temporary housing in the town while it is being worked on. The fact that it is labor intensive, will put a population in the area. Some enterprising individual(s) will create a tavern or two. There would be a general goods store and black smith as such services are a necessity to groups of laborers.
After a few quests nearby, have their fame cause somebody to look for them and send them on a long campaign farther away. When they return months later, there can be real progress on the town - reinforced palisade, actual stone watch tower, permanent structures around town. Personal manor for the PCs.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Make sure micromanaging their home base is something they are interested in. Having your own place to stay as a keep, house, mansion etc. is perfectly natural but being in charge of a whole town and influencing it's economy, taxes, making sure people want to live there etc. is a bit further from your typical "D&D experience".
I know that it turned me away from some Assassins Creed games - instead of being an assassin, I was supposed to choose lumber for my mansion.
They may want to hire a "city manager" and periodically deposit some funds from time to time and just accept free roof and meals.
Oh it'll mostly be background-noise. Basically I'm seeking to create a place where they can eventually have their own true hub. Don't wanna go to neverwinter to adamantine your stuff? hire or find a smith and convince him to join your cause. it won't be 'determine his destiny, exactly what he makes' and so on.
Occassional Dungeon Master.
Hirelings
Recurring Expenses
Building a Stronghold
Running a Business
Those can give you some suggestions for how much being an in-world property developer should cost, but if it was me as the DM, I wouldn't do a lot of fiddly accounting for every brick I would just let their creativity run wild until I thought it had gone far enough and then tell them they had run out of money (but maybe could get more, if they did this little adventure).