Lifestyles 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.
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. Different
Backgrounds offer different lifestyles and you may choose to improve (or decline) your lifestyle during the chronicle.
In our chronicle, Lifestyle lets you buy up to your limit on any of the following tables. If you are attempting to purchase something above the cost of your Lifestyle, then you should work with your storyteller to come up with a way to earn the gold. Players may be patrons for other players, but easy and ready access to these patronage supplies are not guaranteed. You may not use accounting or magic tricks to earn money outside of your limit.
Crafting magical items, brewing potions, scribing scrolls, and building charms always requires time and gold.
- Adventuring Gear, except
- Anything that is primarily used as a weapon, such as
- Acid
- Alchemist's Fire
- Caltrops
- Holy Water
- Poison
- Magic items, such as
- Potion of Healing
- Magical components with a cost associated
- Food, Drink, and Lodging
- Tools
- Mounts and Other Animals, except if you are putting the animal in danger, such as combat
- Tack, Harness, and Drawn Vehicles, except Barding (see armor cost)
Consequential Rewards
Sometimes there may be cases when an in character decision will cause your character to miss out on gold or other rewards that you should otherwise normally receive as reward from plot. In situations like these, it is up to storyteller choice to allow your character to receive an appropriate windfall at a later date that would equal the amount given up.
For example:
Your character was hired by a poor widow to find her husband's killer. After finding the killer, and bringing them to justice, the widow offers to pay you your reward. Your character has the in character choice of taking the gold and adding it to your earned gold, or letting the widow keep her money. You choose to let the widow keep her gold. The storyteller decides that even though you gave up the reward, you later have an appropriate windfall equal to the widow's payment that you add to your earned gold.
Catching Up
Characters that do not earn enough gold for their level will not be allowed to fall behind. Characters will be given a minimum amount of gold according to the following table:
Changing Lifestyle
A player is allowed to increase (or decrease!) their lifestyle over the course of game. To change your lifestyle, you may:
- Use the Benefits & Rewards System to increase your lifestyle.
- Sometimes your lifestyle can be changed through personal plot either as a reward or a challenge. Work with your storyteller to let them know that this is something you'd be interested in.
- Pay a cost to increase your lifestyle using the following chart.
Lifestyle Cost
Gold Balance
Your current gold balance can be found at
Gold Balance.
Lifestyle Types
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.
A Wretched lifestyle gives you no money for regular expenses.
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.
A Squalid lifestyle gives you 30 silver pieces for regular expenses per month.
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.
A Poor lifestyle gives you 60 silver pieces for regular expenses per month.
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.
A Modest lifestyle gives you 30 gold pieces for regular expenses per month.
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.
A Comfortable lifestyle gives you 60 gold pieces for regular expenses per month.
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.
A Wealthy lifestyle gives you 120 gold pieces for regular expenses per month.
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.
An Aristocratic lifestyle gives you an unlimited number of gold pieces for regular expenses per month.
Patronage
Patronage allows a PC to use the Wealthy or Aristocratic lifestyle of their patron in order to produce art and other gear for their patron.
For all items of a mechanical nature (weapon, armor, etc) the gold for the item needs to be subtracted from the patrons actual gold count.
For "fluff" items, the cost of these commissions may be covered by lifestyle. When in doubt, open a ticket.
A patron relationship may be begun icly by discussion between PC's or between PC's and NPC's with ST approval. Patron relationships are formally logged with the appropriate guild - even if the PC is not a member of that guild. Open a ticket with the ST staff to do this.
For ex:
Even if Joe the Cook is not a member of the cooking guild, but a wealthy noble takes him as a patron, the cooks guild will track this relationship in order to ensure obligations are met.
