Expenses and services

SRD 5.1 (2014)

Selling Treasure

Opportunities abound to find treasure, equipment, weapons, armor, and more in the dungeons you explore. Normally, you can sell your treasures and trinkets when you return to a town or other settlement, provided that you can find buyers and merchants interested in your loot.

Arms, Armor, and Other Equipment. As a general rule, undamaged weapons, armor, and other equipment fetch half their cost when sold in a market. Weapons and armor used by monsters are rarely in good enough condition to sell.

Magic Items. Selling magic items is problematic. Finding someone to buy a potion or a scroll isn’t too hard, but other items are out of the realm of most but the wealthiest nobles. Likewise, aside from a few common magic items, you won’t normally come across magic items or spells to purchase. The value of magic is far beyond simple gold and should always be treated as such.

Gems, Jewelry, and Art Objects. These items retain their full value in the marketplace, and you can either trade them in for coin or use them as currency for other transactions. For exceptionally valuable treasures, the GM might require you to find a buyer in a large town or larger community first.

Trade Goods. On the borderlands, many people conduct transactions through barter. Like gems and art objects, trade goods—bars of iron, bags of salt, livestock, and so on—retain their full value in the market and can be used as currency.

Expenses

When not descending into the depths of the earth, exploring ruins for lost treasures, or waging war against the encroaching darkness, adventurers face more mundane realities. Even in a fantastical world, people require basic necessities such as shelter, sustenance, and clothing. These things cost money, although some lifestyles cost more than others.

Lifestyle Expenses

Lifestyle expenses provide you with a simple way to account for the cost of living in a fantasy world. They cover your accommodations, food and drink, and all your other necessities. Furthermore, expenses cover the cost of maintaining your equipment so you can be ready when adventure next calls.

At the start of each week or month (your choice), choose a lifestyle from the Expenses table and pay the price to sustain that lifestyle. The prices listed are per day, so if you wish to calculate the cost of your chosen lifestyle over a thirty-day period, multiply the listed price by 30. Your lifestyle might change from one period to the next, based on the funds you have at your disposal, or you might maintain the same lifestyle throughout your character’s career.

Your lifestyle choice can have consequences. Maintaining a wealthy lifestyle might help you make contacts with the rich and powerful, though you run the risk of attracting thieves. Likewise, living frugally might help you avoid criminals, but you are unlikely to make powerful connections.

Self-Sufficiency

The expenses and lifestyles described here assume that you are spending your time between adventures in town, availing yourself of whatever services you can afford—paying for food and shelter, paying townspeople to sharpen your sword and repair your armor, and so on. Some characters, though, might prefer to spend their time away from civilization, sustaining themselves in the wild by hunting, foraging, and repairing their own gear.

Maintaining this kind of lifestyle doesn’t require you to spend any coin, but it is time-consuming. If you spend your time between adventures practicing a profession, you can eke out the equivalent of a poor lifestyle. Proficiency in the Survival skill lets you live at the equivalent of a comfortable lifestyle.

Food, Drink, and Lodging

The Food, Drink, and Lodging table gives prices for individual food items and a single night’s lodging. These prices are included in your total lifestyle expenses.

Services

Adventurers can pay nonplayer characters to assist them or act on their behalf in a variety of circumstances. Most such hirelings have fairly ordinary skills, while others are masters of a craft or art, and a few are experts with specialized adventuring skills.

Some of the most basic types of hirelings appear on the Services table. Other common hirelings include any of the wide variety of people who inhabit a typical town or city, when the adventurers pay them to perform a specific task. For example, a wizard might pay a carpenter to construct an elaborate chest (and its miniature replica) for use in the secret chest spell. A fighter might commission a blacksmith to forge a special sword. A bard might pay a tailor to make exquisite clothing for an upcoming performance in front of the duke.

Other hirelings provide more expert or dangerous services. Mercenary soldiers paid to help the adventurers take on a hobgoblin army are hirelings, as are sages hired to research ancient or esoteric lore. If a high-level adventurer establishes a stronghold of some kind, he or she might hire a whole staff of servants and agents to run the place, from a castellan or steward to menial laborers to keep the stables clean. These hirelings often enjoy a long-term contract that includes a place to live within the stronghold as part of the offered compensation.

Skilled hirelings include anyone hired to perform a service that involves a proficiency (including weapon, tool, or skill): a mercenary, artisan, scribe, and so on. The pay shown is a minimum; some expert hirelings require more pay. Untrained hirelings are hired for menial work that requires no particular skill and can include laborers, porters, maids, and similar workers.

Spellcasting Services

People who are able to cast spells don’t fall into the category of ordinary hirelings. It might be possible to find someone willing to cast a spell in exchange for coin or favors, but it is rarely easy and no established pay rates exist. As a rule, the higher the level of the desired spell, the harder it is to find someone who can cast it and the more it costs.

Hiring someone to cast a relatively common spell of 1st or 2nd level, such as cure wounds or identify, is easy enough in a city or town, and might cost 10 to 50 gold pieces (plus the cost of any expensive material components). Finding someone able and willing to cast a higher-level spell might involve traveling to a large city, perhaps one with a university or prominent temple. Once found, the spellcaster might ask for a service instead of payment—the kind of service that only adventurers can provide, such as retrieving a rare item from a dangerous locale or traversing a monster-infested wilderness to deliver something important to a distant settlement.

SRD 5.2.1 (2024)

Lifestyle Expenses

Lifestyle expenses summarize the cost of living in a fantasy world. They cover lodging, food, equipment maintenance, and other necessities.

At the start of each week or month (GM’s choice), choose a lifestyle below—Wretched, Squalid, Poor, Modest, Comfortable, Wealthy, or Aristocratic—and pay the price to sustain that lifestyle.

Lifestyles have no inherent consequences, but the GM might take them into account when determining risks or how others perceive your character.

Food, Drink, and Lodging

The Food, Drink, and Lodging table gives prices for food and a single night’s lodging. Prices for daily lodging and meals are included in your lifestyle’s expenses.

Hirelings

Skilled hirelings include anyone hired to perform a service that involves a proficiency (including weapon, tool, or skill): a mercenary, an artisan, a scribe, or the like. The pay shown on the Hirelings table is a minimum; some expert hirelings require more pay. Untrained hirelings are hired for work that requires no particular proficiencies; they include laborers and porters.

Spellcasting

Most settlements contain individuals who are willing to cast spells in exchange for payment. If a spell has expensive components, add the cost of those components to the cost listed in the Spellcasting Services table. The higher the level of a desired spell, the harder it is to find someone to cast it.

Crafting Nonmagical Items

To craft a nonmagical item, you need tools, raw materials, and time, each of which is detailed below. If you meet the requirements, you make the item, and you can use it or sell it at its normal price.

Tools

The “Tools” section of “Equipment” lists which tools are required to make certain items. The GM assigns required tools for items not listed there.

You must use the required tool to make an item and have proficiency with that tool. Anyone who helps you must also have proficiency with it.

Raw Materials

To make an item, you need raw materials worth half its purchase cost (round down). For example, you need 750 GP of raw materials to make Plate Armor, which sells for 1,500 GP. The GM determines whether appropriate raw materials are available.

Time

To determine how many days (working 8 hours a day) it takes to make an item, divide its purchase cost in GP by 10 (round a fraction up to a day). For example, you need 5 days to make a Heavy Crossbow, which sells for 50 GP.

If an item requires multiple days, the days needn’t be consecutive.

Characters can combine their efforts to shorten the crafting time. Divide the time needed to create an item by the number of characters working on it. Normally, only one other character can assist you, but the GM might allow more assistants.

Brewing Potions of Healing

A character who has proficiency with the Herbalism Kit can create a Potion of Healing. Doing so requires using that kit and 25 GP of raw material over the course of 1 day (8 hours of work).

Scribing Spell Scrolls

A spellcaster can transfer a spell to a scroll and create a Spell Scroll, using the rules below.

Time and Cost

Scribing a scroll takes an amount of time and money based on the level of the spell, as shown in the Spell Scroll Costs table. For each day of inscription, you must work for 8 hours. If a scroll requires multiple days, those days needn’t be consecutive.

Spell Scroll Costs

Prerequisites for the Scribe

To scribe a scroll, you must have proficiency in the Arcana skill or with Calligrapher’s Supplies and have the spell prepared on each day of the inscription. You must also have at hand any Material components required by the spell; if the spell consumes its Material components, they are consumed only when you complete the scroll. The scroll’s spell uses your spell save DC and spell attack bonus.

Cantrips

If the scribed spell is a cantrip, the version on the scroll works as if the caster were your level.