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 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.
| Lifestyle Expenses | |
| Lifestyle | Price/Day |
| Wretched | — |
| Squalid | 1 sp |
| Poor | 2 sp |
| Modest | 1 gp |
| Comfortable | 2 gp |
| Wealthy | 4 gp |
| Aristocratic | 10 gp minimum |
Wretched. You live in inhumane conditions. With no place to call home, you shelter wherever you can, sneaking into barns, huddling in old crates, and relying on the good graces of people better off than you. A wretched lifestyle presents abundant dangers. Violence, disease, and hunger follow you wherever you go. Other wretched people covet your armor, weapons, and adventuring gear, which represent a fortune by their standards. You are beneath the notice of most people.
Squalid. You live in a leaky stable, a mud-floored hut just outside town, or a vermin-infested boarding house in the worst part of town. You have shelter from the elements, but you live in a desperate and often violent environment, in places rife with disease, hunger, and misfortune. You are beneath the notice of most people, and you have few legal protections. Most people at this lifestyle level have suffered some terrible setback. They might be disturbed, marked as exiles, or suffer from disease.
Poor. A poor lifestyle means going without the comforts available in a stable community. Simple food and lodgings, threadbare clothing, and unpredictable conditions result in a sufficient, though probably unpleasant, experience. Your accommodations might be a room in a flophouse or in the common room above a tavern. You benefit from some legal protections, but you still have to contend with violence, crime, and disease. People at this lifestyle level tend to be unskilled laborers, costermongers, peddlers, thieves, mercenaries, and other disreputable types.
Modest. A modest lifestyle keeps you out of the slums and ensures that you can maintain your equipment. You live in an older part of town, renting a room in a boarding house, inn, or temple. You don't go hungry or thirsty, and your living conditions are clean, if simple. Ordinary people living modest lifestyles include soldiers with families, laborers, students, priests, hedge wizards, and the like.
Comfortable. Choosing a comfortable lifestyle means that you can afford nicer clothing and can easily maintain your equipment. You live in a small cottage in a middle-class neighborhood or in a private room at a fine inn. You associate with merchants, skilled tradespeople, and military officers.
Wealthy. Choosing a wealthy lifestyle means living a life of luxury, though you might not have achieved the social status associated with the old money of nobility or royalty. You live a lifestyle comparable to that of a highly successful merchant, a favored servant of the royalty, or the owner of a few small businesses. You have respectable lodgings, usually a spacious home in a good part of town or a comfortable suite at a fine inn. You likely have a small staff of servants.
Aristocratic. You live a life of plenty and comfort. You move in circles populated by the most powerful people in the community. You have excellent lodgings, perhaps a townhouse in the nicest part of town or rooms in the finest inn. You dine at the best restaurants, retain the most skilled and fashionable tailor, and have servants attending to your every need. You receive invitations to the social gatherings of the rich and powerful, and spend evenings in the company of politicians, guild leaders, high priests, and nobility. You must also contend with the highest levels of deceit and treachery.
The wealthier you are, the greater the chance you will be drawn into political intrigue as a pawn or participant.
The expenses and lifestyles described in this chapter 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, as described below, 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.
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 Leomund's 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.
| Services | |
| Service | Pay |
| Coach cab | |
| Between towns | 3 cp per mile |
| Coach cab, Within a city | 1 cp |
| Hireling | |
| Skilled | 2 gp per day |
| Untrained | 2 sp per day |
| Messenger | 2 cp per mile |
| Road or gate toll | 1 cp |
| Ship's passage | 1 sp per mile |
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.
Besides the expenses associated with maintaining a particular lifestyle, adventurers might have additional drains on their adventuring income. Player characters who come into possession of property, own businesses, and employ hirelings must cover the expenses that accompany these ventures.
| Maintenance Costs | |||
| Property | Total Cost per Day | Skilled Hirelings | Untrained Hirelings |
| Abbey | 20 gp | 5 | 25 |
| Farm | 5 sp | 1 | 2 |
| Guildhall, town or city | 5 gp | 5 | 3 |
| Inn, rural roadside | 10 gp | 5 | 10 |
| Inn, town or city | 5 gp | 1 | 5 |
| Keep or small castle | 100 gp | 50 | 50 |
| Lodge, hunting | 5 sp | 1 | - |
| Noble estate | 10 gp | 3 | 15 |
| Outpost or fort | 50 gp | 20 | 40 |
| Palace or large castle | 400 gp | 200 | 100 |
| Shop | 2 gp | 1 | - |
| Temple, large | 25 gp | 10 | 10 |
| Temple, small | 1 gp | 2 | - |
| Tower, fortified | 25 gp | 10 | - |
| Trading post | 10 gp | 4 | 2 |
It's not unusual for adventurers-especially after 10th level-to gain possession of a castle, a tavern, or another piece of property. They might buy it with their hard-won loot, take it by force, obtain it in a lucky draw from a deck of many things, or acquire it by other means.
The Maintenance Costs table shows the per-day upkeep cost for any such property. (The cost of a normal residence isn't included here because it falls under lifestyle expenses, as discussed in the Player's Handbook.) Maintenance expenses need to be paid every 30 days. Given that adventurers spend much of their time adventuring, staff includes a steward who can make payments in the party's absence.
Total Cost per Day. The cost includes everything it takes to maintain the property and keep things running smoothly, including the salaries of hirelings. If the property earns money that can offset maintenance costs(by charging fees, collecting tithes or donations, or selling goods), that is taken into account in the table.
An adventurer-owned business can earn enough money to cover its own maintenance costs. However, the owner needs to periodically ensure that everything is running smoothly by tending to the business between adventures. See the information on running a business in the "Downtime Activities" section of this chapter.
Castles and keeps employ soldiers (use the veteran and guard statistics in the Monster Manual) to defend them. Roadside inns, outposts and forts, palaces, and temples rely on less-experienced defenders (use the guard statistics in the Monster Manual). These armed warriors make up the bulk of a property's skilled hirelings.
Between adventures, the DM might ask you what your character is doing during his or her downtime. Periods of downtime can vary in duration, but each downtime activity requires a certain number of days to complete before you gain any benefit, and at least 8 hours of each day must be spent on the downtime activity for the day to count. The days do not need to be consecutive. If you have more than the minimum amount of days to spend, you can keep doing the same thing for a longer period of time, or switch to a new downtime activity.
By engaging the characters in downtime activities that take weeks or even months to complete, you can give your campaign a longer time line—one in which events in the world play out over years. Wars begin and end, tyrants come and go, and royal lines rise and fall over the course of the story that you and the characters tell.
Downtime rules also provide ways for characters to spend—or be relieved of—the monetary treasure they amass on their adventures.
The system presented here consists of two elements. First, it introduces the concept of rivals. Second, it details a number of downtime activities that characters can undertake. Downtime activities other than the ones presented below are possible. If you want your character to spend his or her downtime performing an activity not covered here, discuss it with your DM.
Rivals are NPCs who oppose the characters and make their presence felt whenever the characters are engaging in downtime. A rival might be a villain you have featured in past adventures or plan to use in the future. Rivals can also include good or neutral folk who are at odds with the characters, whether because they have opposing goals or they simply dislike one another. The cultist of Orcus whose plans the characters have foiled, the ambitious merchant prince who wants to rule the city with an iron fist, and the nosy high priest of Helm who is convinced the characters are up to no good are all examples of rivals.
A rival's agenda changes over time. Though the characters engage in downtime only between adventures, their rivals rarely rest, continuing to spin plots and work against the characters even when the characters are off doing something else.
Downtime activities are tasks that usually take a workweek (5 days) or longer to perform. These tasks can include buying or creating magic items, pulling off crimes, and working at a job. A character selects a downtime activity from among those available and pays the cost of that activity in time and money. You, as DM, then follow the rules for the activity to resolve it, informing the player of the results and any complications that ensue.
Consider handling downtime away from the game table. For example, you could have the players pick their downtime activities at the end of a session, and then communicate about them by email or text, until you next see them in person.
The description of each activity tells you how to resolve it. Many activities require an ability check, so be sure to note the character's relevant ability modifiers. Follow the steps in the activity, and determine the results.
Most downtime activities require a workweek (5 days) to complete. Some activities require days, weeks (7 days), or months (30 days). A character must spend at least 8 hours of each day engaged in the downtime activity for that day to count toward the activity's completion.
The days of an activity don't need to be consecutive; you can spread them over a longer period of time than is required for the activity. But that period of time should be no more than twice as long as the required time; otherwise you should introduce extra complications (see below) and possibly double the activity's costs to represent the inefficiency of the character's progress.
The description of several downtime activities includes a discussion of complications that characters might encounter. The consequences of a complication might spawn entire adventures, introduce NPCs to vex the party, or give the characters headaches or advantages in any number of other ways.
Each of these sections has a table that offers possible complications. You can roll to determine a complication randomly, pick one from the table, or devise one of your own.
The following is a list of downtime activities a character might choose to undertake in their free time between adventures. It covers many of the most common things a character might wish to engage in but it is by no means exhaustive.