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[Kassire]

To be fair the dwarves look interesting enough to mess around with. Then there's the possibility of messing with politics down south from there.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Um. So. Remuthra offered me a spot, because I had played in the predecessor to this. So I have an unfluffed Archivist. Sorry for being late to the party.
I also have ~90 gold to spend. Any ideas?

[Criptfeind]

That's enough to buy 4500 chickens. The choice is obvious.

[Kassire]

Um. So. Remuthra offered me a spot, because I had played in the predecessor to this. So I have an unfluffed Archivist. Sorry for being late to the party.
I also have ~90 gold to spend. Any ideas?

If you could, buy a light horse for you cleric buddy and say I got some debt with you. I got JUST enough money for a military saddle too.

[Orange Wizard]

That's enough to buy 4500 chickens. The choice is obvious.

+1

[Criptfeind]

What do you want a horse for when you can just push yourself around though your devotion to your ancestors?

[Kassire]

What do you want a horse for when you can just push yourself around though your devotion to your ancestors?

Fair point, but I gotta get my ride up to ride a bear into battle

[Criptfeind]

Man, maybe you should be a druid. They can summon bears at level three, and start having a permanent bear companion at level 4.

Anyway, I've been fooling around trying to think of what I want to play. And I think probably a sorcerer. Mostly because I was originally going to go beguiler, but I sorta figured that beguilers are sorta like more restricted sorcerers anyway and I can just disarm traps by summoning bunnies or something and throwing them in.

I was thinking of my guy being a Irreverent Karrian sorcerer, who's been forced out of his home because of gambling debts. Looking to the future, I was thinking I'd like to eventually take ether Mage of the Arcane Order or Sandshaper. However, both of those are a bit setting specific. I was wondering Remuthra, if there are any organizations (that a human could join) that would fit for mage of the arcane order and/or if the touchstone feat required for sandshaper could be switched to some equivalent touchstone feat that would exist in the Karrian deserts? (Unless the City of the Dead is actually a place that exists in the Realm of Fog)

[Kassire]

Eh, I'll try a druid another time as I've been wanting to make a ranged cleric for awhile now and the bear riding popped up from the whole riding bonus.

[Flying Dice]

Points in Ride so that he can dismount and ghostride beside his horse, presumably.

Also, my goodness but we ended up with a varied selection of characters, both in terms of class and personality. Should be fun times regardless of how the cards fall.

[My Name is Immaterial]

Um. So. Remuthra offered me a spot, because I had played in the predecessor to this. So I have an unfluffed Archivist. Sorry for being late to the party.
I also have ~90 gold to spend. Any ideas?

If you could, buy a light horse for you cleric buddy and say I got some debt with you. I got JUST enough money for a military saddle too.

I'm going to do this provisionally: I have some questions for Remuthra first, and they involve how much I can sell a dozen chicken eggs for. Then I'm going to do math, and see if I should invest in a chicken farm instead. Or a fishing boat. I can do the math for that right now, in fact.

[My Name is Immaterial]

I have mathed to my satisfaction.
My god, the D&D economy is broken.
Remuthra, if you let me use this, I won't purchase a single magic item with it. Just more boats. And property. And hirelings. And a few ships for us to use. I'll only gain political power, not personal.
That said, I will buy a horse for Kassire with some of the profits.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Premise:
I have 85 gold.
I would like to spend it on hirelings and capital so I make a profit.
I would like to do this by catching and selling fish.

Expenses:
A somewhat seaworthy vessel is the Dugout Canoe. It costs 20 gold, and holds 4 people, according to Stormwrack.
So, I have 4 fishermen. This is unskilled labour, and an untrained hireling costs 1 sp/day, according to the DMG.
As of now, I must make at least 4 sp/day to cover my day to day expenses.
They each need a fishing rod. The rod itself is easy: a quarterstaff, which has no cost. Having no RAW cost for fishing tackle, I will assume that 25 feet of Silk Rope equivalent will suffice for each fisherman, each day, which costs 5 gp for each fisherman.
My day to day expenses are now 5.4 gp.
Now, they need fishing hooks. The SRD lists a fishing hook as costing 1 sp. I am assuming they each use 2/day.
My day to day expenses are now 6.2 gp.
We will assume that the boat becomes unusable after 20 days, so we accrue an equipment depreciation expense of 1 gp/day.
My day to day expenses are now 7.2 gp.
We will round it to 10 gp to account for unforeseen expenses.
I will hire a clerk to manage the business in my absence. I will hire an old, VERY trustworthy friend from the legion (my character served in the Legion of Doom) and give him a 20% cut of net profits.

Profits:
This source says that a single man can expect to pull in ~100 pounds of fish per day using the handline method: http://www.galapagos.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/biodiv8-white-fish-fishery.pdf
Due to technological innovations and skill, I feel safe in cutting the catch by half, but I suspect that the actual number would be higher. However, I have no evidence to prove this. So, my fishermen catch ~50 pounds of fish per fisherman per fishing day.
Let’s assume that all they catch are Sardines, a mid-cost fish, by the Arms and Equipment Guide’s standards, at 4 gp/pound.
Let’s assume that I sell to a middleman, who resells the fish at a 100% markup, meaning that I sell my fish for 2 gp/pound.
I have four fishermen, each pulling in ~50 pounds of fish, for a total of ~200 pounds of fish a day. This is resold for ~400 gp, each day.

Net: (hehehehe puns)
400 gp profits.
-10 gp expenses.
390 gp net profits.
-78 gp for friend
312 gp profits in my pocket.

Did I do any math wrong? Are my assumptions bad?

[Orange Wizard]

Woah. Okay, that's way better than chickens.

[Remuthra]

You assume your fishermen are able to catch 50 pounds of fish each day, but doing this is likely to through various methods deplete the fishing area, and your fishermen aren't guaranteed to haul something in. And you'd need to get that gold to you. You can try, though .

[Criptfeind]

Well... The D&D economy is pretty fucked, however, fishing would certainly fall within your guys making profession checks. And since they are unskilled laborers they are pulling in a mere 1 silver of fish per day. Each.

4 sp profits.
-10 gp expenses.
-9.6 gp net profits.
-0 gp for friend
-9.6 gp profits in your pocket.

It might be fucked, but only in the amount.

Now, if it was skilled labor. They would probably be bringing in about... .85 to 1.14 gold per day, each. As for wages, it's hard to tell exactly how much they would cost, however, the basic is that all the example hirelings are people doing things for the PCs that the PCs ether want or need but the hireling themselves don't want or need (or at least can't live alone.) essentially, they need to put these skills to use for someone else to make their living. Fishermen are not like that however, so it might be appropriate to give them different wages. Question why they would be working for the, the answer seems to be ether a practical reason: You offer a series of bonuses to their work that they could not afford themselves. Depending on how expensive and long term these bonuses are they might not really work as a long term way to keep the fishermen working under you. But with sufficient ones you could retain workers in the long term. However, what you pay them would have to be enough to avoid them being able to make more on their own, which offers a very convenient answer to your profit. Which would be: (The bonus that you provide)/2=your net profit (before the clerk) in gp per week per man. -whatever small amount you give to your men as a bonus to keep them happy+whatever expenses you have that the fishermen would have on their own. Of course, this bonus needs to both be long term (to be able to have a profit.) and expensive (so that the fishermen don't save up enough to buy it on their own.) Something like a good fishing ship (that you don't replace weekly) seems like it would be a reasonable thing for this.

A launch might fit, 500 gold (too expensive for all but the most industrious of fishermen to save up for) for a ocean going vessel. It can carry eight fishermen. You would have to work with the GM on what the bonus it would give is. Something like +2(masterwork tool)+2(extra ship bonus)+2(ocean fishing) would give you a profit of 24 gold per week (Minus whatever docking fees and clerk fees and such), and would pay off the ship in about six months. +4 would pay off the ship in 8-9. +2 would pay it off in a bit under a year and a half. These are all pretty reasonable bonuses. Although you might need a captain instead of a eighth fisher, which would slow it down a bit and also be a more expensive guy to pay.

The second method is to have some legal right to their work. If they are serfs under you, or if you own the legal rights to the fishing in the area, you can extract value by adding nothing of your own.

There are also rules for business, although I can't remember where. I know I've seen them in the stronghold guide, but those were more for owning a place that makes money. I've seen more appropriate rules elsewhere, but I can't remember where, and they seemed slightly broken. Oh well.

On this topic though, there's a interesting feat in the stronghold guide that doubles your wbl, but you have to spend the extra on things like castles, hirlings, ext, things that don't make you personally stronger. I've sorta followed that as a guideline before in my games, basically secretly giving that feat for free (or to put it another way, giving more money and following that guideline on how much) to players interested in kingdom building (it's not great to have to take it.), and it seemed to work well. Although you have to be careful of players who will do anything for more power, just sack their own kingdoms for a +1 to their weapon...

Edit: I went with the launch instead of the dugout because A: It seems more appropriate and B: if the dugout works there's no way you can keep a long term business going via providing ship based mechanical bonuses. It costs too little. Some other ship would honestly be more appropriate then ether. I actually though the profit would be lower, but if you are at +6 even the more expensive ships should repay themselves in a couple of years. Which is sorta reasonable.

Edit 2: I also didn't touch tax (and depending on where you are, tithe.) Which considering the presumably primitive nature of this world, could significantly eat into your pockets. Or not effect you what so ever. I have no idea.

Edit 3: Oh, also, the arms and equipment guides prices for food and such seem to be a order of magnitude more then then players handbook. I'm not sure what's up with that. but 4 gold per pound of fish might be unreasonable... Not that it matters too much in the super weird D&D profit based economy.