In my opinion, the first thing the party should do is hire a captain. In my experience most players want to buy the ship first, but how the heck would their PCs know whether they're getting a good vessel or a lemon? Starting with the captain gives you expert advice on every other aspect of the problem. The normal cost of a captain is 250 gp/month. He'll work for the PCs at least one month before the actual expedition.
Since the only navigational aid in the party's possession is some musty scroll probably found in a stinky old dungeon, the captain urges the party to hire a navigator right away. "You don't want the navigator plotting the course as we leave the harbor, after all." The navigator earns 150gp per month and will also work for at least one month prior to setting sail.
The captain and navigator study the scroll and estimate it will take a week to get there. The party decides that this initial voyage will be a short one: a week there, two weeks of scouting out the island, and a week back. So they will only hire everyone else in the crew for one month. So the captain and navigator will end up costing a total of 800gp.
Sailor's earn 10gp per month and at least 10 are required to operate a small sailing ship. One of the more grizzled players urges the party to hire 15 sailors. He fears the DM will kill some of the sailors and then pimp over the party somehow when the ship is understaffed. That'll be 150gp for the crew.
So the party has spent 6,950gp and maybe thinks they're ready to go. The DM smiles and reminds them they have to feed everyone for a month. Including the PCs and their henchmen, that's approximately 25 mouths. We'll round up to 28 people for a consumption rate of 4 week's rations per day. For the first week everyone could eat standard rations for 20gp a day, or 140gp. The remaining 3 weeks will cost 60gp a day for sea biscuit and beef jerky (iron rations), or 1,260gp. That's 1,400gp for food.
Drink is a little trickier to calculate. How much hydration does one wineskin provide? I don't really know. PCs in my game tend to guzzle the whole damn thing when adventuring gets rough. So maybe I'll just arbitrarily decide the expedition needs 10 barrels of wine at 100gp a piece, or 1,000gp total.
Some of the players will probably complain on spending 2,400gp for food and drink, but them's the breaks. If they're smart, they'll round up to 3,000gp as cushion for windless seas and other emergencies leading to a longer expedition than planned. They'll also bring 600gp in extra food and drink for each time they plan on carousing while on this little voyage.
So here's the final tally for our hypothetical sea voyage:
500gp captain
300gp navigator
6,000gp vessel + boat
150gp sailors
3,000gp food & drink
9,950gp TOTAL
Note that's a small boat, no mercenaries to guard the ship while the PCs are playing away team, and no money spent on miscellaneous equipment the party might need once they make landfall. And only a two week window to find anything interesting (i.e. loot to make the voyage profitable).
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The PCs in my 4e game are currently looking to hire a ship, since in my world, teleportation can't cross large bodies of water. (Otherwise, there'd be no pirates... I did some math, and even with the worst possible roll on your Teleport ritual, you could get something like two dozen servants, each carrying 100 lbs of gems and platinum, through the portal, and this would be worth many dozens of times what the ritual costs. You would NEVER risk transporting high-value, low weight, items by ship if you could use magic.) I'll need to look at your numbers to work out what to charge them, though I doubt it will make much difference at their level.
ReplyDeleteI've always assumed a wineskin holds enough for a day.
ReplyDeleteYou've slipped a digit on your cost for sailors - 15 Sailors at 10 gp /month = 150gp, not 1500. So I've just saved your party 1350 gold (which really should be used to get more food and some mercs).
ReplyDeleteThanks, Colin!
ReplyDeleteStill crazy-expensive. We did plenty of sea voyages back in the day, but we must've been fudging the costs bigtime. I'm going to have to take a look at these rules - and overland ones - and do some thinking. If the rules make expeditions that expensive, then you'd need a damn good reason - or a wealthy/noble patron - to do it.
ReplyDeleteI'd think that a 4th level party with decent savings should be able to afford it; all of my PCs (lvls 4-7) have 3,000-odd gp weighing them down.
ReplyDeleteThis is some pretty excellent stuff, Jeff - I'm interested in a style of game in which an expedition to a locale is a big risk because of cost. The huge outlay of cash means that the DM can hand out impressive amounts of treasure without flooding the PCs with wealth, and instead of trying to buy magic items (a problem in some games) with all that cash, the PCs are using it to pay for the next big trip.
ReplyDeleteWhat I would kind of like is a more package-deal approach in DM-reference materials, because as a DM I would worry about overlooking one or more major logistical concerns, or feeling like I need to track down numbers on one particular thing. Sure, I could make something up to keep the session moving, but I know myself - I'm just a little too likely to charge the players more for things when I know they're flush with cash.
One big plus in the PC's favor, though, is that they get to keep the ship afterwards - the majority of the cost of the expedition! That could lead to all kinds of profitable ventures in the future
ReplyDeleteHaving done this before, using these very same rules, it is interesting the difference between 1 gp = 1 XP vs. 1 gp spent = 1 XP. The former tends to render the investment too expensive — the risk is too much for the potential reward. The latter, however, gives players a huge incentive to spend that money regardless of whether or not the expedition is profitable — because it means nearly 10,000 XP up front plus what ever they happen to find on their way.
ReplyDeleteThis really suggests that one sea voyage gone wrong could ruin a party financially. Verisimilitudinous! :D
ReplyDeleteDo you think the cost for rations could be reduced? Iron rations are our equivalent of MREs. I'd think that even short trip vessels would have someone on board to cook beans and dice up some onions. For a month long trip, most food supplies may not need to be "iron" rations.
ReplyDeletePerhaps this could reduce the cost of provisions by 50% or more?
jcf, that sounds like a reasonable argument, but as a DM I am required to soak the players whenever possible.
ReplyDeleteminor nitpick: I guess it depends on the setting, but the British Royal Navy kept its sailors hydrated on a "near-limitless" supply of beer (rather than wine).
ReplyDeleteiron goat: yeah. but that's if you want to run a Ship-Of-The-Line in Elizabethan or Colonial times. i seem to remember Sindbad and his posse gettin grape-lipped on some giant amphoras of whatever.
ReplyDeleteRE: expensive rations - chalk it up to harbormasters fleecing the landlubbers? maybe after the PCs run a couple voyages, "learn the ropes" so to speak they can figure out where to get cheap hardtack and can eventually gain some levels in Sea Captain or whatever and even avoid having to pay somebody else to drink brandy in the cabin and look at maps
not to mention i'm guessing sea charts in Wessex basically consist of a compass rose and then a picture of Godzilla labelled "Here There be Monsters????"
ReplyDeleteTangentially, one of my favorite price-table entries of all time is from Pendragon:
ReplyDelete"Hire a pirate ship, 20 men, no questions asked."
You could probably cut the cost by hiring a captain who already has a boat and crew. Of course, he may have his own agenda.
ReplyDeleteWith only one lifeboat that only holds the party members, I think the captain and crew would want to double their wages for "danger pay". I'm sure they can figure out who gets the preferential seating in a time of emergency (hint: it won't be them!).
ReplyDeletewhy not use the Hireling morale rules, i'm guessing in such circumstances a mutiny would occur
ReplyDeletethis could get so much more complicated. Can your ship actually land? Do you want to get authentically 12th c England about it? Sailing to fairyland? Beware stowaways.
ReplyDeletefirst caveat: historical 12th c mediterranean voyages could take 5x as long as expected without anyone crying foul. They don't really know where they're going. And Hy Brazil or the Island of 7 Bishops could throw them off course (have you read Johnson's "phantom islamds of the Atlantic?" Perfect for this). I say they'll want 2 months rations and water for their 1 week jaunt into the unknown. Which coincidentally is enough to get them to Roanoke, if needed.
Not everyone trusts compasses and, depending on how fantastical your gameworld gets, the stars might be against an impious party. None but pilgrims should go upon the sea, for under the sea there is a fire, and under the fire there is a sea.
That expedition is doomed, doomed I say !
ReplyDeleteThere's a good chance they will get lost even with a navigator and only about a 33% chance the voyage to and from the isle will each take but a week.
The seagoing rules in the expert set make ocean journeys a very iffy affair.
So a 2 seater life boat will set you back 1,000GP but an Ocean-going sailing vessel with accommodations for at least 20 people plus room in the hold for vast treasure haul can be had for 5,000GP? Sounds like a steal.
ReplyDelete@timrod: that's the square-cube rule for you.
ReplyDelete