Chapter One

A Note on Prices: Doing it by the Rules

People have opinions, and people on the Internet have a lot of opinions. More than a few of those opinions revolve around the prices for goods and services as listed in the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide. In some cases, these involve lower-level items (“50 gp for a longbow?!”), whereas others involve the extreme cost, both in building and upkeep, for major purchases. 

I’m not immune to this. The DMG has an airship listed as a vehicle next to the waterborne ones from the PHB, and somehow the airship (20k gp) is less than a galley (30k gp). Unless the airship is a fking canoe, and the passengers have to paddle their way through the sky, I think the idea that a flying ship would cost less than a very large but mundane boat is absolutely bonkers.

Nevertheless, as previously stated, I want to make this book as easy to use as possible. As such, prices from the PHB and DMG will generally stand, and the economic models set forth will explain, when necessary, why these prices (and especially upkeep costs) are plausible. In those instances where prices must diverge from the books, how and why they diverge will be clearly explained.

Please keep in mind that the goal of this book is to create functional systems, not dictate prices. If I’ve achieved that goal, a DM who doesn’t like the numbers in the core books, or even in this book, should still be able to adjust some costs and understand what changes are necessary to make the overarching systems work for their world.