# Price list for buildings...



## Wispr

Hey,

Was wondering if anyone knew of a 3.5 price chart that would give you a good price estimate on constructing lets say a small temple. 

Any help would be much appreciated!

Wispr


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## Celebrim

Wispr said:


> Hey,
> 
> Was wondering if anyone knew of a 3.5 price chart that would give you a good price estimate on constructing lets say a small temple.
> 
> Any help would be much appreciated!
> 
> Wispr




Historically, all price lists for D&D have been very wacky.   This is Gygax's fault, and he did it deliberately because he was less concerned with making a realistic functioning economy than he was in balancing the core game play - which was delving into dungeons, killing things, and taking there stuff.   This bias is seen all over the place, including the spell lists and the magic item price lists, but its most egregious in the price lists for ordinary stuff.

To begin with, decide what your economy is based on.   Traditionally, the D&D adventuring economy is gold peice based - despite the lack of realism in that - and so things that adventurers were supposed to be buying are priced in gold.  This creates problem when Gygax decides to adopt realism in other places and have the mundane economy be silver peice based (probably to prevent the PC's from getting too rich collecting taxes), and conversely keeps buildings based on a gold/adventuring economy (resulting in a situation where peasants can't afford to build even simple shacks).   

To my knowledge, since that rocky start, things haven't really gotten any better.

Personally, rather than relying on any price list, I'd ask yourself what you really want from your game.  Do you want buildings to be an attractive option for PC's, so that they have appended to their character sheet a long list of blue prints?  There is good and bad in that so there is no right answer.   Are you going for realism?  What historical era is your game play centered on?

Assuming a typical fantasy gold peice standard and your typical low fantasy campaign with platemail and the like, I'd personally price a simple temple at about 2-3 g.p. per square foot.   So a simple enclosed shrine with a single 20x30' room and your basic decoration might run 1200-1800 g.p.


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## Greenfield

Does the Stronghold Builder's Guide (mentioned in another thread) include prices?


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## Greenfield

Does the Stronghold Builder's Guide (mentioned in another thread) include prices?

Hmm.  Just looked.  Forget I asked.  Yes, it does, but it's far from simple to figure out.


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## TanisFrey

Yes, it has prices for having building being constructed.


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## Pergentile

Just have specific common buildings that are quickly and cost-efficiently built by contractors.
I have been a contractor, and let me tell you, whenever someone tells me they want a curved wall, or a wall with lots of angles that aren't "right", I facepalm.
A Contractor can build an average square house at three quarters the cost. He can do it at half the cost if he is working for free. ^^
In my world, there is a Guild that controls and manages the construction of basic buildings, allowing the average citizen to be able to have a nice comfy home. =D


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## frankthedm

Simple house  	1,000 gp
Grand house 	5,000 gp
Mansion 	100,000 gp
Tower 	50,000 gp
Keep 	150,000 gp
Castle 	500,000 gp
Huge castle 	1,000,000 gp
Moat with bridge 	50,000 g

Personally, I don’t think the DMG prices for property are that unreasonable. ( IMHO the Instant fortress is underpriced ). The commoners don’t own squat and when the king gets told it costs 1000s of gold for magic items, he expects to get similar amounts for his land. 

I would personally interpret the high GP costs cover the 'fees' and 'taxes' for obtaining such properties. When players can defend properties, they have a lot of income at their disposal. If they don’t have the cash, they can negotiate prices. And sometimes interested parties may offer really good deals.
_
The Curio Company is pleased to inform you that you have received a most generous offer in regards to the items of significant enchantment you wished to receive more than ‘the going rate’ for. The offer consists of a fully furnished mansion, with the only stipulation being your group takes residence in the mansion for no less than 5 years. The offer comes from the King himself so we strongly recommend you accept such a generosity with haste. The building and land rights alone are worth nearly 100,000 gold, A profit of over 50% beyond the market value of your Crown of Telepathy: 27,000 gp and +6 Cloak of Charisma: 36,000 gp.​_


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## Wispr

Thanks everyone for the replies and help!


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## airwalkrr

Frankthedm gave you the official answer for 3.5. But I'd also like to note that I allow players in my Eberron campaign to purchase property in the city of Sharn (where the campaign is based) following some guidelines that are in the Sharn, City of Towers supplement, which provides a randomized value range depending on where the neighborhood is. A poor residence (single room condo with just enough room for a bed and some personal belongings) is 1d4x100 gp and is located in a bad part of town. An average residence (multi-room condo or home with enough room for a small family or a large family if several people share) is 1d4x1,500 gp and is located in a middle-class or poor neighborhood. An upscale residence (expensive manor or luxurious condo) is 2d8x2,500 gp and is located in a wealthy or middle class neighborhood.


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## RainOfSteel

frankthedm said:


> Simple house  	1,000 gp
> 
> Personally, I don’t think the DMG prices for property are that unreasonable. ( IMHO the Instant fortress is underpriced ). The commoners don’t own squat and when the king gets told it costs 1000s of gold for magic items, he expects to get similar amounts for his land.



I never agreed with a cost of 1,000gp for a simple house with a "thatch roof".

As for purchasing land from the nobility, in medieval times, you often couldn't buy land at all.  Commonly speaking, you were a serf and it didn't matter, you rented if you were free, were enfeoffed by a higher noble if you were a worth lesser noble, or you were the church and it was donated to you by a noble.

In any event, the other villagers would get together and help their neighbors raise the new house.  Payment was usually in the expectation of return assistance later.  If anything material was given, it might have been meals during the labor.


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## Celebrim

RainOfSteel said:


> I never agreed with a cost of 1,000gp for a simple house with a "thatch roof".




The biggest unrealism in that is the 'gold peice'.  The medieval peasant rarely saw a coin, but when they did it was copper and silver.  Since ancient times, a silver coin had been considered a days wages.  By the high middle ages, inflation had raised wages to the equivalent of 2-3 silver coins per day but brought for the peasant at least only a marginal increase in real wealth from the increased prosperity.  (The real money in the high middle ages was earned by the craft guilds with their legally enforced monopolies that let them fix high prices.)  

So, for simplicity of calculation, let's fix the days wage at 1 s.p.  If this is a fantasy economy where gold is as common as cobblestone, then the days wage could be a g.p.

Does it seem reasonable that a house for a peasant would cost three years of his wages?  Maybe or maybe not.  I don't find it too unreasonable, as three years wages is at least something that a family working together might save up over a few years, especially if we are thinking of houses as housing extended families of 12-16 people as they often did.  But, perhaps there are factors I don't know about that would allow for more accurate calculations.  The point is that 1000 s.p. is a reasonable cost for a house in an economy where the minimum wage is set at about 1 s.p. per day.  The problem you sometimes run into, as in 1e, is that Gygax sets the minimum wage at 1 s.p. per day and then sets the cost of a house at more than 10,000 s.p.  It makes sense in the adventuring economy, but not so much in the larger economy.



> As for purchasing land from the nobility, in medieval times, you often couldn't buy land at all.  Commonly speaking, you were a serf and it didn't matter, you rented if you were free




The cottages and improvements on the land were often in theory owned even by the serfs.  In the Doomsday Book, for example, there are some fairly wealthy 'slaves' and there is documentation of nobles borrowing money from the serfs on their land because one of the serfs had become wealthy enough that they had more coin than their lord.   There are also examples in the Doomsday Book of women property owners and renters who had higher legal standing than their lower born husband.  The medieval system was nothing if not complicated, individualized, and baroque.  It was essentially little more than government through contractual obligation, and everyone's contractual obligation varied according to what they could negotiate.



> In any event, the other villagers would get together and help their neighbors raise the new house.




This doesn't change the cost of the house though.  If 50 of your friends (and their wives) come over for a house raising, the cost of the house still must include the value of the labor that was donated to its construction.  That right there would mean that the cost might be at least equivalent to 100 day wages (because any skilled carpenters would have labor worth several times the minimum wage), plus the cost of the labor put into the materials. Wealth is created by labor, but there is no free lunch.  Donated labor is still a cost born by someone.



> Payment was usually in the expectation of return assistance later.  If anything material was given, it might have been meals during the labor.




All perhaps true, but just because you dont' have a coin based economy (and in most of the middle ages you had feudalism precisely because you didn't), doesnt' mean that prices are reduced.  It just means you find alternative means of paying them than coin.


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## Greenfield

Throughout most of the feudal period, building anything was problematic.  You needed the permission of the local nobility, who controlled the land.

Note that, technically, they didn't own it, they merely controlled it.  The Crown owned it.  The Crown owned essentially all the land under its authority, with the notable exception of church properties.

We tend to forget this in our modern view of the period, and in the way we game.  The "cost of the land" was never a factor, since you couldn't buy it.  To be an actual landowner was a special thing.  Over time the nobility all accessed this privilege, at least for their family estates, but for a commoner it was all but unheard of for them to be a landowner.

It wasn't until the Renaissance that a middle class developed that could gather enough wealth and influence that a new term found its way into the language:  Landlord.

These were commoners who were able to own land, and act as the nobles had in previous times, letting others live on their land, and collecting rents for that use.  Being a landowner got a lot easier when the "New World" opened up, and that was a lot of the attraction for colonists.  Even then, it was and remained such a special thing that it was mentioned in the US Constitution as a prerequisite for being able to vote.  The Founders had no plan to let the common man vote, only the wealthy.

Also remember that, during the Dark Ages and well afterward, the common people themselves were considered the property of their lords.  Look up the word "Serf", and you'll see what I mean.  Russia didn't free their serfs until the mid 1800s, right around the time of the American Civil War.  To be a freeman was something special.  It meant that you owned yourself, and were free to travel as you chose.

So, while we play at games in a pseudo-medieval worlds, there's an entire spectrum of that world that we almost never even think about, and building homes or strongholds touches on a lot of it.


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## lordxaviar

the original DMG has times and costs that tie in with the new prices quite well, I havent compiled it yet but will eventually..


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