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Gelcur
Senior Scribe
502 Posts |
 Posted - 24 Nov 2021 : 19:59:10
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I have been doing a lot of thinking on just how wealthy nobles and organizations really are. I know the answer is as wealthy as DMs want them to be but I like to have a guide to springboard off of. What follows is a lot meandering thoughts please feel free to comment.
I liked how 3.5e City of Splendors: Waterdeep combined all the 3.5e DMG2 rules on guilds and organizations and then leveraged it to also stat out churches and noble houses. It also states on p.60 to ascend to nobility one would need personal wealth in excess of 25,000gp.
Crunching the "available gp" for all the noble houses in the supplement there is a range from as little as 3,800gp all the way to 127,400gp. Figure the low and high are outliers so the range is more likely 20,000 to 60,000gp, averages around 40k. Compare that to something like the Xanathar Thieves' Guild, 720,000gp available, or say the Church of Lathander in Waterdeep, 1.6 million.
That got me wondering how much do they have tied up in property? I used Steven Schend's Waterdeep Property estimates. Seems an average sized Class A in Sea Ward would go for roughly 150,000gp. A Class B in the North Ward run maybe 25,000gp. Power of Faerun goes on to tell us that last two noble houses to ascend were staggeringly wealthy, loaned money out like it was going out of style, and bought up a great number of properties in the North Ward and gave them away to other nobles. One of the two houses funded this by literally stumbling on caverns full of already mined rubies... Say an unfinished ruby goes for 333gp a finished one 1,000gp, if they found five thousand just lying around, we are talking something like 1.6-5 million depending on if they could find enough gemcutters, very likely much more.
It then dawned on me these noble houses are basically businesses and the 3.5e DMG2 had some broken rules on those. A long while back I had tweaked them slightly to make them actually work. Important take away to start a High Capital, High Resource business would cost 164,000gp, this includes a 100,000gp as a mansion, warehouses, or rentals.
Then I had some fiction references, Dragon238 p.65 Orgaz had several thousand score gold of Mirt's, even low balled we are talking 100,000gp. Later in the story we find that the Brossfeathers owe Mirt more gold than a thousand thousand, 1 million gold. Its implied this is a rather large sum for even nobles. Seems to be implied if he had to he would have to liquidate their estate to try to recoup the debt. In Death Masks we have Braethan Cazondur paying Qasmult 100,000gp for murdering a Hidden Lord and at least another 100,000gp changed hands as a down payment for killing a fairly powerful mage. This is likely made possible by his ties to the Xanathar Thieves' Guild. Mirt in the same book offers 200,000gp to raise a friend from the dead.
So what does all this mean? This is just me trying to assimilate all this info: An average noble house likely has something like 40,000gp available if needed, they likely own a "home" worth about 4x that 160,000gp, and the value of the property related to the business another 100,000gp. Brings us to 300,000gp. Businesses have value outside of their physical goods as long as they are profitable and obviously buildings would be filled with stuff, including jewelry, clothing, furniture, magical goods, etc, add another 200,000gp? So we are looking at 500,000gp. Maybe 250,000gp for minor houses, 1.2 million gp for major ones.
Some perspective, Mirt or the Church of Lathander in Waterdeep would have enough free coin to likely buy an entire major noble estate on their own. The Xanathar Thieves' Guild could do the same with any minor or average noble house.
Obviously this is a snapshot taken in a vacuum, obviously noble houses during tough times will have less gold on hand or maybe even hold debts. They might sell of properties but not downsize their villa. I was just shooting for a baseline.
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The party come to a town befallen by hysteria
Rogue: So what's in the general store?
DM: What are you looking for?
Rogue: Whatevers in the store.
DM: Like what?
Rogue: Everything.
DM: There is a lot of stuff.
Rogue: Is there a cart outside?
DM: (rolls) Yes.
Rogue: We'll take it all, we may need it for the greater good. |
Edited by - Gelcur on 24 Nov 2021 20:02:37
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Wealth in Waterdeep
