Taxation and trade
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Contents |
[edit] Gold is everything...
Huge sums of money make the world go round and peoples heads spin. Being immensly rich makes life so much easier. This section details how the finances cities, kings and governments can be estimated. Mostly I'm going to be thinking about New Glade, but the rules are fairly general.
[edit] Tax income.
| Here is a table of town sizes from the DM's guide. | |
| Thorp | 20-80 |
| Hamlet | 81-400 |
| Village | 401-900 |
| Small town | 901-2,000 |
| Large town | 2,001-5,000 |
| Small city | 5,001-12,000 |
| Large city | 12,001-25,000 |
| Metropolis | 25,001+ |
Naturally, this depends on how greedy the rulers of a given area are. A fair level of taxation can be taken as 10% of earnings, the traditional tithe. If a typical labourer earns 30 gp a year, he pays 3 gp in tax.
Not everybody earns the same amount, and in any given population there will be wealthy people who earn far more. There will also be a lot of unproductive people - children, the eldarly and the crippled.
It can be assumed that this 10% produces 2 gp per head of population. So a settelment of 10,000 people has a budget of 20,000 gps. Which sounds like a lot, but there are always expenses - often rather a lot of them. If a watchman earns 30 gp a year, paying for 50 of them cuts 1,500 gp out already, and those damn clerk and scribes command a high wage, as much as 120 gp a year each. Multiply that up as well... Building expenses too. A new hall could set you back 10,000 gp easily
The military can be expensive too. If the king wants a force of 1,000 regular soldiers, that could set him back 60,000 gp a year, rather more than what the city earns from tax on its own. That is another section, though.
[edit] Trade
Trade is name given to the exchange of goods and money. The name given to its abscence is poverty.
Trade can take many forms, but I'm only going to worry about the ones likely to be seen in New Glade, which spares me from having to worry about the price of spice in Challenga and the cost of shipping it.
If a lot of unsettled land available, horse breeding will be a good way of raising extra cash, So I will list rules for that.
Having a blacksmith on hand is useful, if only because it reduces the cost of weapons and armour, so that will be covered too.
[edit] Horse Breeding
| Profits and production from from horse farms | |||
| Farm Type | Produces | Set up cost (gp) | Net annual Profit (gp) |
| Small horse | Ponies, mules and donkeys | 400 | 40 |
| Medium Horse Farm | Light and heavy horses | 1,100 | 275 |
| War horse farm | light and heavy war horses and war ponies | 2,600 | 650 |
I've split horse farms into three catagories - Small, medium and war. The names refer to the size/quality of equine produced. Rather than go into all the details, I'm going to just list a set up cost and anual net profit each produces per 'unit' of farm. A unit is basically 10 breeding horses along with the stabling to keep them.
Having access to a horse farm reduces the cost of equiping followers with mounts by 25%, as long as you have a horse farm of the right type. Of course, it will take a smaller farm longer to provide those horses than a larger one. Each unit can't normally provide more than 4 mounts per year without selling off its breeding stock. If you want more than that, you'll have to buy them in at the usual price.
The set up prices listed above assume that land is available for free - which is the case for New Glade. In other places expeniture on land will put the prices up further.
[edit] Smiths and Armourers
| Production from different sized smiths | |
| Number of units | Can produce... |
| 1 | Simple weapons and armour with a +3 AC bonus or less |
| 3 | Simple and martial weapons. Armour with a +5 AC bonus of less. |
| 8 | All weapons and armour types. Masterwork items |
All those horses are going to need shoes. Plus New Glade will want a few pieces of steel to keep out all the unwelcome guests that may be passing through.
The tools used to created horse and other metal items aren't all that different to those used in making weapons and armour. A few extra for working leather and wood is all that is required. The skills involved are more distinct, however, and often more demanding. A typical village blacksmith isn't often called upon to make splintmail, and so might not know how.
Seting up a workshop capable of producing weapon, armour and, of course, horse shoes, will set you back 1,200 gps per unit. In this case a unit is one master and two apprentices. The more units of smith there are in a settlement, the more skilled the best craftman is likely to be. Therefore, the quality of weapons and armour that can be produced is determined by the under of units present. Speed of production also increases with size. Making bows and arrows is considered to be too far removed from the skills of a typical smith to be produced here. Bowyer would be needed for such a task.
Having a smith on hand reduces the cost of suitable weapons and armour by 25%. It also generates a net income of 150 gp a year.
