It's the fantasy version of middle class. It's a level of comfort that I am familiar with. So 2 gp gets you a pretty decent day with good accommodation and good food. Personally, my base-line to get a grip on the value of gold is the "Comfortable 2 gp/day" line in the table. However, the lifestyle expenses table is a fantastic little table to get a grip of the value of gold, to help determine how much cash is present in a location or purse of an NPC. Players will typically have a few hundred gp to spend relatively soon in the campaign, and nobody (that I know) wants to spend that in-game in increments of 1-2 gp. I really hate it when D&D is turned into a bookkeeping exercise, so I will never do a daily upkeep, and I prefer to round down all expenses below 1 gp to zero (we will roleplay that money is spent, but players don't need to update the character sheets). I use that table a lot, but not for it's intended purpose. It’s a little more bookkeeping than I’m used to (I track all gold coming in and out for the party), but it’s helped shape the style and tone of the campaign more than I thought it would. It also gives them a sense of accomplishment and progression, as they see their characters go from sleeping in a ditch every week and eating rations, to lodging in the best room at the inn and enjoying the finest of wines. Making them pay for food and shelter reminded them that their characters weren’t beyond the basic needs of life. I wanted to ground the players into the world and make them feel like they were nobody’s becoming somebodies. But that’s not the atmosphere or tone of this campaign. If I was running a grand fantasy campaign where the characters were trying to save the world from Baelzar the Wicked and his horde of oozes, I wouldn’t bother. The gamble though is that on a roll of 1-5 on a D6, something bad happens to the character while living wretchedly, as mentioned above. A player can choose to have their character live like a wretch for a week, then win big in a pit fighting match, thus keeping more gold for better gear and levelling up. Sometimes the downtime activity is enough to cover the costs of the lifestyle chosen or more. I also use this with long rests that are a week long, during which the characters are either partaking in downtime activities or just bumming around. So players have a choice of getting a short term buff at the cost of levelling up slower. The decision to spend 210 GP for a week of wealthy living and get a buff is balanced, however, by the fact that 1GP equals 2XP in this campaign. Therefore the character gets a bonus for the next incursion into the dungeon. Comfortable to Wealthy means your character has covered the costs of gear maintenance, but also decides to eat well and get adequate rest. Wretched to poor covers basically gear maintenance and there is a chance of something bad happening during the week of rest, such as getting sick or attacked. The cost of each lifestyle is not just about food and lodging, but also about gear maintenance and resupply. I use a homebrew version of lifestyle expenses in the dungeon crawl campaign I’m currently running.
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