Lifestyle
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Lifestyle
Between adventures, when the heroes stumble back into town for some rest, a chance to upgrade their equipment, and generally let off some steam, players may want an opportunity to express the standard of living that their characters expect. Adventuring is a lucrative business, after all, and players who want to enjoy their riches a little, instead of plowing it all into that next +1 for their weapon might want to purchase a lifestyle.
Lifestyles are entirely optional. Players can live day to day in town, knowing that they'll be moving on as soon as the next back-stabbed messenger staggers into the bar gasping out a quest with his dying words. Expenses like a room at an inn or a modest dinner can be purchased daily, if players wish, with minimal fuss.
But suppose the player wants a place to call home, or wants a fine wardrobe to wear around town. Suppose the character wants contacts among the merchants, or even nobility. These things are only achievable two ways: through somewhat grinding role-playing where the character establishes his credentials with each individual he wants to have dealings with, or by buying and maintaining the appropriate level of lifestyle. In addition to giving the character a place to actually keep his nice wardrobe unsoiled (you really didn't want to carry all those clothes into the dungeon, did you?), a lifestyle can also provide easy access to numerous services. The grander lifestyles often come with butlers and housekeepers, private chefs and stablemasters. While not cheap, they allow the character to move around the town with the respect they deserve.
Roughing It
- Cost per month: Free
Heroes are resourceful folks, and they can use their survival skill to live in an untamed area, surviving on hunted game, foraged fruits, nuts and vegetables, and making many of their menial necessities. A character who spends 6 hours hunting, tending to his campsite and generally carving out an existence for himself can make a survival check, DC 10, to successfully rough it for a day. For every 5 that the check is exceeded by, the character can support one additional character who can't fend for themselves, or they can store provisions for the next day. If a check is failed, the character goes without food for the day and gains the fatigued condition the following morning. This fatigued condition cannot be removed except by getting a good meal and a full day of rest, either from a successful hunt or by some other means. If a character fails his survival check three days in a row, he gains the exhausted condition, which can only be removed by getting a good meal, at which point, it reverts to fatigued. If an exhausted character fails three checks after becoming exhausted, he dies.
To someone skilled in Survival, roughing it primarily costs time. It takes a lot of effort and attention to keep alive in the wilderness, even for heroes. While it is possible to maintain this lifestyle indefinitely, there is very little leisure to it.
Squalid
- Cost per month: 1 sp
The squalid lifestyle is, depending on the campaign world, often where the majority of humanoids live out their lives. A squalid lifestyle costs 1 silver piece per month to maintain, and for many of the people in this lifestyle, it is a daily struggle to achieve this meager cost. People living in squalor rarely eat more than once per day, are always hungry, often malnourished and even diseased. They might have a few places that they can go to sleep with only minimal fear of being attacked or robbed of their paltry possessions. However, they keep a few such places, because if someone tougher comes around, they'll move on rather than risk a fight, which could lead to an injury or infection which keeps them from scraping out the next day's meal. This is the lifestyle of beggars, petty thieves, unskilled laborers, the sick or elderly (those which have no family in better straights than they, anyway), and orphans. Often, these people rely on the largess of wealthier folk, or churches and charities. Some nobles also deign to distribute food or blankets to the poor and needy, though there is never enough to go around (and most nobles feel even the smallest token gesture is enough to establish their credentials as philanthropists).
Even if a character can afford the 1 sp upkeep of the squalid lifestyle, he still spends at least 6 hours each day actually using that money to continue living. Finding a place that will give him scraps of food for a couple of copper pieces, ensuring that no one robs him of his windfall while he sleeps, maybe daring to spend a little of the money on a blanket or some shoes. All of these things make it very difficult for someone living in squalor to find time for other things.
If a character fails to pay the 1 sp upkeep in any given month, he likely dies of exposure, contracts a serious illness, or suffers some other significant setback. This setback often makes it impossible to survive the next month, and makes the character vulnerable to predators and opportunists.
Heroes almost never live in the squalid lifestyle. Even the lowliest of hero would prefer to take their chances in the wilderness roughing it, than sleep in a makeshift stack of crates under a bridge, begging for coin or scraps of food. If a hero chooses, or is forced, to live this lifestyle, they can use the Knowledge (Local) skill to try to get by, with a DC of 20. This check can be made each day, and the character only needs to succeed once per month to successfully maintain the lifestyle. Those who wish to can simply take 20 on the roll, but doing so takes up the whole month.
Meager
- Cost per month: 1 gp
A meager lifestyle
Modest
- Cost per month: 25 gp
Comfortable
- Cost per month: 100 gp
Wealthy
- Cost per month: 1,000 gp
Lesser Nobility
- Cost per month: 10,000 gp
Middle Nobility
- Cost per month: 100,000 gp
Upper Nobility
- Cost per month: 1,000,000 gp
Emperor/Empress
- Cost per month: 100,000,000 gp