This is a very interesting table to me because it attaches some RP hooks to the normal drudgery of day to day book keeping. Does anyone use this?

What I don't get is that most campaigns are day-to-day, so they'd likely be paying for things themselves rather than abstracting it over a time period of a week or month. And it doesn't apply if they're in the wilderness, right? Or does it? It kind of falls under the same category of confusion as the wizard copying a spellbook for 50gp if they're in the middle of nowhere. This one makes more sense to apply only in town though.

I think the obvious answer is that these are supposed to be used in-between campaigns, or during downtime. You just use this to say what you were up to during the timeskip. But I could also see players going bankrupt since they're just eating up gold on their lifestyle expenses and not earning anything since they're not adventuring. How exactly are they supposed to maintain the lifestyle if the downtime doesn't have them earning or doing anything to support it? It's not like the players play during downtime, so they won't be grabbing huge hoards of gold from anywhere. They're stuck with the gold they have going into it.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;880136How exactly are they supposed to maintain the lifestyle if the downtime doesn't have them earning or doing anything to support it?

• Get a really big hoard so you have enough silver and gold to tied you over until the next big score.

• Use the gold you do have to get more gold. Invest the loot they have stolen. Buy land, open up a bar, loan money at interest, become a silent partner in some NPC's business.

• Get a job.

Pretty much what people did then and do now.

The downtime costs are for when the PCs are "off duty" back in town recuperating or sitting down to copy spells into spellbooks, research, craft, train, whatever.

It is not used if the PCs are ever out in the field. When running the Hoard of the Dragon Queen the party never once got a chance and about 2 or more months have passes.

PHB Page 187 Practicing a Profession. A PC can maintain a Modest lifestyle without spending your own coin by doing work in town. If you are part of an organization that can provide employment then you can maintain a Comfortable lifestyle. And if you have the Performance proficiency then you can maintain a Wealthy lifestyle.

That help?

My players have multiple businesses and other properties whereby monthly expenses runs somewhere in thousands; the castle is particularly expensive.  They have a spreadsheet figuring it all out.  They adventure to pay the bills.

The recently started griffin ranch is expected to finally get them out of the red when it gets in full operation, but will be about a year.  We guessed a Griffin would eat a goat a week, but are open to suggestions if anyone has a better estimate.

We have really dug into the DMG section that gives costs of running places.  I have detailed out exactly what positions are needed for the skilled and unskilled people.  The downtime in an RPG is much fun.

Obviously I don't use the D&D chart, but GURPS has similar rules.  In particular, there's a monthly cost-of-living amount based on your Status.  This would apply whether you were in the wilderness or not: even if you're of low status, your clothing still needs periodic replacement, your gear still needs upkeep and refurbishment, and if you're like a lot of players, you don't feel the need to do bookkeeping over every mug of beer you drink or every street performer you tip.  If you're not of low status, then your home still needs upkeep, the taxes still need to be met, and your servants still need to be paid.

All parties love downtime for training or RP purposes.  That fancy new suit of mail you want will take a month to make; the magic item you commission will take a good bit longer.  It's common for my players to take odd jobs during downtime to keep the coin coming in; wizards especially take day jobs.

As far as Bren's list goes, the only things I'd add are these: people can always downgrade their lifestyle if costs exceed income, or else they can borrow money.  (Not that your average adventurer would be a good credit risk.)

Quote from: Old One Eye;880206We guessed a Griffin would eat a goat a week, but are open to suggestions if anyone has a better estimate.

Unless griffins have greatly (and unusually) smaller appetites than other carnivores of their size, that's badly overoptimistic.  A lion can survive on 10-15 lbs of meat a day, which is a bit less than half the meat yield from a modern-day goat.  Given the much smaller medieval goats, I'd suggest that a griffin would pack away 4-5 goats a week.

Quote from: Old One Eye;880206The recently started griffin ranch is expected to finally get them out of the red when it gets in full operation, but will be about a year.  We guessed a Griffin would eat a goat a week, but are open to suggestions if anyone has a better estimate.

I don't know if mine is a better estimate. Here's what I did.

How much do big cats eat?

To get a back of the envelope calculation I decided to look at how much a few real world predators eat. A couple of quick searches on Google turned up the following.

QuoteLions typically gorged themselves during a feasting time following a kill. They could easily eat 50 to 60 pounds of meat in one sitting. The male needs an average of about 15 pounds (7 kg) of meat a day, where is the female needs around 11 pounds (5 kg) a day.

QuoteTigers eat between 4 and 7% of their body weight. This is only a theoretical average. In the wild tigers and lions will gorge up to one hundred pounds at one sitting and then fast for many days. In captivity tigers and lions eat considerably less because of sedentary life styles that burn fewer calories.

Lions and Tigers don't fly and big cats sleep a lot. Presumably active flight is more energy intensive than walking. So it could be that griffons eat a higher percentage of their body weight than do tigers. So let's look at some avian predators.

How much do avian predators eat?

QuoteThey can carry things that are up to about half their body weight. Our red-tailed hawk weights about 2 lbs. A can of pop weighs about one pound, so this bird weighs about as much as two cans of pop. A young rabbit weighs 2-4 pounds, which means it's too big for this hawk. A big squirrel could weigh 2 pounds. Red-tailed hawks eat lots of mice. Red-tailed hawks eat about three white-footed mice a day. We feed gophers to our hawk. Because of the damage they do to farmer's crops there is bounty paid for gophers in Washington County. We receive the gophers after they have been trapped.

QuoteQ: How much does a Peregrine falcon eat in a day? A: An adult Peregrine will eat about 70 grams of food per day. This is equal to about two blackbirds.
Peregrine falcon/Mass/

Female: 1.1 – 3.3 lbs
Male: 0.73 – 2.2 lbs

So a female peregrine is about 2.2 pounds or 1 kilogram. If we use that mass and 70 grams of food we get a food requirement of 7% body mass in meat per day. Which was the top end for the tiger.

QuoteQ. How many pounds of food does a Bald Eagle eat in a day?
A. Approximately .5 - 1.5 per day.

QuoteHow much does a Bald Eagle weight: 6.6 – 14 lbs

If we use those weights, we get between 8% and 14% of body weight as the food requirement for an eagle.

The lower number is close to our 7% figure. The upper number is quite a bit higher. I don't know why eagles would have a much higher metabolic requirement than falcons, but then I'm not even an amateur ornithologist. I do see red tailed hawks spending a lot of time sitting on telegraph poles, tree branches, and fence posts so maybe eagles spend more time flying.
I think of griffons soaring a lot and not really sitting on fence posts and such. So to cover the worse case, I'll use the 14% of body mass requirement for griffons.

How Big is a Goat?

QuoteGoats: Each recognized breed of goats has specific weight ranges, which vary from over 140 kg (300 lb) for bucks of larger breeds such as the Boer, to 20 to 27 kg (45 to 60 lb) for smaller goat does. Within each breed, different strains or bloodlines may have different recognized sizes. At the bottom of the size range are miniature breeds such as the African Pygmy, which stand 41 to 58 cm (16 to 23 in) at the shoulder as adults.

Somewhere else I saw a quote that 40-50% of live goat weight would be meat.

Assuming by goat we mean a male goat (because why butcher a female goat) then weight might be somewhere between 60 and 300 pounds. Let's say 150 pounds. Which will give 60-75 pounds of meat. Let's use the smaller number. So each goat is 60 pounds of meat.

Back calculating, at a 14% of body weight food requirement, 60 pounds of goat meat per day would support a griffon that weighs 428 pounds. If the body weight requirement was 8% that would support a griffon that weighs 750 pounds.

So how much does a griffon weigh?
Pathfinder says, over 500 pounds. The same source also says that "Griffons can carry up to 300 pounds as a light load, 600 pounds as a medium load, and 900 pounds as a heavy load."

Cross checking with other information I note that a red tailed hawk can carry half its body weight. So unless griffons have magical wings that allow them better lift than a hawk, the weight limits are much too high compared to what we saw for a red tailed hawk.

We could just assume there is a lot of variety in griffon sizes, assume that griffons have similar carrying capacities to hawks, and double the weights in the range to obtain a range for griffons of 600-1800 pounds.

At the low end 8% body weight food requirement griffons would need between 48 and 144 pounds of meat per day. Which is about 1-2 goats.

At the high end 14% body weight food requirement griffons would need between 84 and 252 pounds of meat per day. Which is about a goat and a half to 4 goats per day.

So our back of the envelope calculation says 1 goat per day is about the bare minimum from any calculation. Which likely means that one goat is not enough.

Lions and tigers in the wild don't eat every day. They gorge and fast. Back in OD&D griffons liked to eat horses. So how much meat is there on a horse?

Horses weight 840 – 2,200 lbs. Averaging that we get 1520 pounds. Let's call that 1500 pounds. I didn't see a quick answer to how much meat a horse yields. Instead let's look at steers.

QuoteThe yield of edible meat from a beef carcass often comes as a bit of a surprise, even to those that have had their own meat processed for years.  A previous iGrow article covered dressing percent—the percent of the live animal weight that becomes carcass weight, which for fed beef is usually around 62-64%.  In other words, from a 1200 pound steer, you can expect a 740 – 770 pound carcass. Let's call that about 750 pounds of meat.

I'm going to assume that steers bred for meat production provide a higher yield of meat to mass than do horses. If we assume a horse yields 50% meat we get 750 pounds of meat per average size horse.

Which means that at the low end a horse would feed a griffon for about 15 days. This seems way too long a fast for an animal based on mammalian and avian predators.

Comparing the four meat requirements per day to a 750 pound horse we see the following range:
48 pounds means a horse lasts for 15 days
84 pounds means a horse lasts for 9 days
144 pounds means a horse lasts for 5 days
252 pounds means a horse lasts for 3 days

The highest two meat requirements approximately fit the eating pattern of gorge and fast for lions in the wild. Since we know griffons eat horses in the wild, the lower numbers and the time frame don't accord with single or paired griffons eating an entire horse since they probably cannot fast for 8-14 days.

So if the GM assumes that griffons are large (1800 pounds) and have a high metabolic rate the PCs could feed 1 griffon 1 horse every 3 days. If we assume significantly smaller griffons (600 pounds) then 1 horse every 5 days will suffice. That sounds about right.

Also note that if griffons weigh 1800 pounds and can lift half their weight, they can actually carry off a 900 pound horse and return with it to their nest. Horses in the wild are smaller than are many domestic horse breeds. So a 900 pound wild horse sounds reasonable. With a smaller wild horse griffons would need to eat one horse every 2 or 3 days. This yields a reasonable griffon ecology.

So how much does a griffon eat?
So I'm going to go with about 1 (domestic) horse every 3-5 days or between 1.5 and 4 goats per day for each mature griffon in captivity.

Do I use the tables? Yes.

How do you use them? Well, as the chapter in PHB states, as you like it from either daily, weekly, or monthly. It's open to interpretation, but given Poor is 6 gp/mo and Modest is 30 gp/mo, shouldn't be too hard to have PCs cover things to avoid unwanted complications.

If you want more ideas there's the Adventure League season rules, which with Expeditions are actually very interesting campaign fodder. Expeditions are focused on city states along the Moonsea, and each location has a very different feel. Each background is given a lifestyle value which provides options to abstract away the PC plying a trade while waiting for an adventure job. They also give different optional regional Backgrounds, and regional factional benefits used for downtime.

If you want the interesting complications from Wretched, Squalid, Poor, and Aristocratic Lifestyles, and don't have an immediate idea how to pair what Background to which Lifestyle, I would give the AL Season rules a quick scan.

Quote from: Bren;880269I don't know if mine is a better estimate. Here's what I did.

How much do big cats eat?

To get a back of the envelope calculation I decided to look at how much a few real world predators eat. A couple of quick searches on Google turned up the following.





Lions and Tigers don't fly and big cats sleep a lot. Presumably active flight is more energy intensive than walking. So it could be that griffons eat a higher percentage of their body weight than do tigers. So let's look at some avian predators.

How much do avian predators eat?



So a female peregrine is about 2.2 pounds or 1 kilogram. If we use that mass and 70 grams of food we get a food requirement of 7% body mass in meat per day. Which was the top end for the tiger.



If we use those weights, we get between 8% and 14% of body weight as the food requirement for an eagle.

The lower number is close to our 7% figure. The upper number is quite a bit higher. I don't know why eagles would have a much higher metabolic requirement than falcons, but then I'm not even an amateur ornithologist. I do see red tailed hawks spending a lot of time sitting on telegraph poles, tree branches, and fence posts so maybe eagles spend more time flying.
I think of griffons soaring a lot and not really sitting on fence posts and such. So to cover the worse case, I'll use the 14% of body mass requirement for griffons.

How Big is a Goat?

Somewhere else I saw a quote that 40-50% of live goat weight would be meat.

Assuming by goat we mean a male goat (because why butcher a female goat) then weight might be somewhere between 60 and 300 pounds. Let's say 150 pounds. Which will give 60-75 pounds of meat. Let's use the smaller number. So each goat is 60 pounds of meat.

Back calculating, at a 14% of body weight food requirement, 60 pounds of goat meat per day would support a griffon that weighs 428 pounds. If the body weight requirement was 8% that would support a griffon that weighs 750 pounds.

So how much does a griffon weigh?
Pathfinder says, over 500 pounds. The same source also says that "Griffons can carry up to 300 pounds as a light load, 600 pounds as a medium load, and 900 pounds as a heavy load."

Cross checking with other information I note that a red tailed hawk can carry half its body weight. So unless griffons have magical wings that allow them better lift than a hawk, the weight limits are much too high compared to what we saw for a red tailed hawk.

We could just assume there is a lot of variety in griffon sizes, assume that griffons have similar carrying capacities to hawks, and double the weights in the range to obtain a range for griffons of 600-1800 pounds.

At the low end 8% body weight food requirement griffons would need between 48 and 144 pounds of meat per day. Which is about 1-2 goats.

At the high end 14% body weight food requirement griffons would need between 84 and 252 pounds of meat per day. Which is about a goat and a half to 4 goats per day.

So our back of the envelope calculation says 1 goat per day is about the bare minimum from any calculation. Which likely means that one goat is not enough.

Lions and tigers in the wild don't eat every day. They gorge and fast. Back in OD&D griffons liked to eat horses. So how much meat is there on a horse?

Horses weight 840 – 2,200 lbs. Averaging that we get 1520 pounds. Let's call that 1500 pounds. I didn't see a quick answer to how much meat a horse yields. Instead let's look at steers.


I'm going to assume that steers bred for meat production provide a higher yield of meat to mass than do horses. If we assume a horse yields 50% meat we get 750 pounds of meat per average size horse.

Which means that at the low end a horse would feed a griffon for about 15 days. This seems way too long a fast for an animal based on mammalian and avian predators.

Comparing the four meat requirements per day to a 750 pound horse we see the following range:
48 pounds means a horse lasts for 15 days
84 pounds means a horse lasts for 9 days
144 pounds means a horse lasts for 5 days
252 pounds means a horse lasts for 3 days

The highest two meat requirements approximately fit the eating pattern of gorge and fast for lions in the wild. Since we know griffons eat horses in the wild, the lower numbers and the time frame don't accord with single or paired griffons eating an entire horse since they probably cannot fast for 8-14 days.

So if the GM assumes that griffons are large (1800 pounds) and have a high metabolic rate the PCs could feed 1 griffon 1 horse every 3 days. If we assume significantly smaller griffons (600 pounds) then 1 horse every 5 days will suffice. That sounds about right.

Also note that if griffons weigh 1800 pounds and can lift half their weight, they can actually carry off a 900 pound horse and return with it to their nest. Horses in the wild are smaller than are many domestic horse breeds. So a 900 pound wild horse sounds reasonable. With a smaller wild horse griffons would need to eat one horse every 2 or 3 days. This yields a reasonable griffon ecology.

So how much does a griffon eat?
So I'm going to go with about 1 (domestic) horse every 3-5 days or between 1.5 and 4 goats per day for each mature griffon in captivity.

That was quite a tour de force. I know so much more now about animals eating animals. Bravo. :cool:

Methinks the retired ranger come griffin trainer is going to soon have a very awkward conversation with the PCs that his goat estimate was not even in the right ballpark.  I imagine at this point he is sort of hoping they never return from their current foray into Hell.  Given our gaming style, this shock to expenses will likely bother the players more than any of the horrors they have encountered down below.

Thanks for the direction, folks!

You are welcome. Back of the envelope exercises are a good way to reality check one's assumptions.

If the Ranger is clever, he could claim that when he said "goat" he meant a really massive wild mountain goat (they can get up to 300 pounds) or a takin. A male takin runs 300–350 kg (660–770 lb). Also takin live in the Himalayas so finding one might be kind of challenging.

Quote from: Old One Eye;880301Methinks the retired ranger come griffin trainer is going to soon have a very awkward conversation with the PCs that his goat estimate was not even in the right ballpark.  I imagine at this point he is sort of hoping they never return from their current foray into Hell.  Given our gaming style, this shock to expenses will likely bother the players more than any of the horrors they have encountered down below.

Maybe he meant giant goats, which would probably have 8+ times as much meat on them. Or, if he made it to second level before retiring, maybe he planned to make up any shortage using the Goodberry spell.

I based griffon food requirements off that of eagles since flying animals tend to have higher food requirements due to the energy expenditures needed to fly. Exceptions being low energy hand-glider types that ride air currents and updrafts.

on a related note there was a table in shadowrun 3e that covered this idea might pay to convert it

Expenses are precisely for those games where there's significant periods of 'downtime'.  And they're usually quite tricky.  There's really three ways to manage it: a precise beancounting system that is very time-consuming and that players will try to work, an abstract system of basic costs which may be fairly imprecise, or some kind of a 'carousing' or random check to see the state of one's finances (which some players will love, and others will find unfair).

There's no single good answer, only better or worse versions of any of the above. And largely, which one to use depends on the campaign you're running.