Inept Wizard

Coin Values

A coin weighs about a third of an ounce, so fifty coins weigh a pound.

What a coin buys is easiest to judge against what a coin is earned for. Daily wages for a range of trades are given on the Daily Wages table, and a labourer earns what a footman earns.

Coins by Another Name

The three coins are named for their metal, but a setting may call them whatever its people would. In a medieval English setting they are the penny, the shilling, and the pound; in a Roman one, the as, the denarius, and the aureus. Only the names change. Prices in this book are drawn from what things actually cost when they actually existed, and they hold whatever the coins are called.

Daily Wages

A noble is not paid a wage. The figure is what his land yields him in a day, and it runs from a single manor at the low end to an earldom at the high.

The Weight of a Penny

A labourer is paid in copper and a loaf is bought with it. Silver settles a merchant’s accounts. Gold belongs to lords, to bankers, and to the ransom of prisoners, and a character who has never held a Gold Piece is in no way remarkable.

Barter

Some settings and adventures may not use coins; in such realms, barter is the customary exchange. A farmer might trade a piglet for a cask of ale. Carrying swine on an adventure is impractical, however, and rings, amulets and jewels are generally accepted in barter wherever coin is not (see “Jewellery”).

Weapon Groups

Every weapon belongs to one of eight groups: Axes, Bows, Daggers, Maces, Rigged, Spears, Staffs, and Swords.

Anyone can pick up any weapon and use it. Your attack roll with a weapon is a d20 plus the relevant ability modifier plus your Skill Rank in that weapon’s group.

Knacks are granted in whole groups and never in individual weapons. A Knack halves the Skill Point cost of ranks in its group and raises the cap on that rank (see “Skill Rank” in “Playing the Game”). A knight with a Knack in Swords buys ranks in Swords at half price and applies that rank to a Shortsword and a Greatsword alike.

A ninth group, Unarmed, holds no weapons at all. It covers the punch, the kick, the headbutt, and the grip, and its Skill Rank applies to Unarmed Strikes and to the Grapple and the Shove they allow (see “Unarmed Strike” in “Playing the Game”). Ranks and a Knack are bought in it as in any other group.

Properties

Ammunition. You can use a weapon that has the Ammunition property to make a ranged attack only if you have ammunition to fire from it. The type of ammunition required is specified with the weapon’s range. Each attack expends one piece of ammunition. Drawing that ammunition is part of the attack rather than a Free Action, provided it is worn ready on the body in a quiver, a sack at the hip, or a like holder; it belongs to the attack and not to the action that grants it, so every attack you make draws its own. Ammunition carried any other way — stowed in a pack, bundled at the belt, thrust point-down in the ground — must be taken up with your Free Action for the turn, one piece at a time, and a second piece in the same turn requires the Utilise action (see “Adventuring Gear”). After a fight, you can spend 1 minute to recover half the ammunition you used in the fight; the rest is lost.

Ceremonial. Once per Long Rest, while you hold this weapon, you can expend one Spell Die you have left as a Bonus Action, rolling it and regaining that many Magic Points (see “Regaining Magic Points” in “Spellcasting”). You gain nothing from a Ceremonial weapon unless you have Skill Rank 1 or higher in its group. A Ceremonial weapon is regalia before it is a weapon, and its price is the goldsmith’s work rather than the smith’s.

Finesse. When making an attack with a Finesse weapon, use your choice of your Strength or Dexterity modifier for the attack and damage rolls. You must use the same modifier for both rolls.

Heavy. You have Disadvantage on attack rolls with a Heavy weapon if your Strength score isn’t at least 13. Bows are never Heavy; a bow’s demand on the body is set by its draw force instead (see “Bows”).

Light. A Light weapon is small and balanced enough to be handled in either hand. Holding a Light weapon in each hand doesn’t by itself let you attack with both on the same turn; an extra attack with the second weapon comes only from a feat that grants one (see “Feats” in “Character Creation”).

Range. A weapon’s range appears in parentheses after the Ammunition or Thrown property. The first number is the normal range in feet; the second is the long range. Attacking a target beyond normal range gives you Disadvantage on the attack roll. You can’t attack a target beyond the long range.

Reach. A Reach weapon adds 5 feet to your reach when you attack with it, and when determining your reach for Opportunity Attacks with it.

Special. A Special weapon does something no property covers, and the rules for it are given in a note under its group’s table.

Thrown. You can throw a Thrown weapon to make a ranged attack. Use the same ability modifier for the attack and damage rolls that you would use for a melee attack with it.

Two-Handed. A Two-Handed weapon requires two hands when you attack with it.

Unwieldy. You have Disadvantage on attack rolls with an Unwieldy weapon if two or more creatures are within 5 feet of you. The weapon needs room for its swing, and a press doesn’t give it.

Versatile. A Versatile weapon can be used with one or two hands. The damage in parentheses is what it deals when used with two hands to make a melee attack.

Mastery Properties

Using a weapon’s mastery property requires the Weapon Mastery feat, and it does not apply to every hit. If you attack with a weapon whose mastery property you have unlocked, the d20 shows 19 or 20, and the attack hits, you can apply that property to the attack.

Cleave. If you hit a creature with a melee attack roll using this weapon, you can make a melee attack roll with the weapon against a second creature within 5 feet of the first that is also within your reach. On a hit, the second creature takes the weapon’s damage, but don’t add your ability modifier to that damage unless that modifier is negative.

Puncture. If you hit a creature with this weapon, its Resistance Points against this weapon’s damage type count as 0 against this attack. This can’t raise them: a creature already below 0 against that damage keeps what it has.

Sap. If you hit a creature with this weapon, that creature has Disadvantage on its next attack roll before the start of your next turn.

Slow. If you hit a creature with this weapon and deal damage to it, you can reduce its Speed by 10 feet until the start of your next turn. If the creature is hit more than once by weapons that have this property, the Speed reduction doesn’t exceed 10 feet.

Snag. If you hit a creature no larger than you with this weapon, the hook catches and holds it. The creature’s Speed is 0 until the start of your next turn. If the creature is mounted, it is instead dragged from the saddle and lands with the Prone condition in an unoccupied space within 5 feet of its mount. You can’t use this property on a thrown attack.

Sweep. If you hit a creature with this weapon, you can let the arc carry through. Each other creature within your reach takes damage equal to the ability modifier used to make the attack roll, of the same type the weapon deals. You choose whether to sweep, but not who the blade finds.

Topple. If you hit a creature no larger than you with this weapon, it has the Prone condition.

Vex. If you hit a creature with this weapon and deal damage to it, you have Advantage on your next attack roll against that creature before the end of your next turn.

Weapons by Group

A table for each group follows, listing the weapons in it.

Ammunition

A weapon with the Ammunition property needs something to shoot from it. Arrows are given with the bows that shoot them (see “Arrows”). What a sling throws is given on the Ammunition table.

Bow Strength Requirement

You can shoot a bow only if your Strength score meets or exceeds the bow’s requirement, listed on the Bows table. If your Strength falls short, you cannot bring the bow to full draw and cannot use it at all.

The requirement depends on how the bow is built. Round each result up.

• Shortbow: draw force ÷ 3 + 4
• Longbow: draw force ÷ 5 + 4
• Composite Bow: draw force ÷ 4 + 4

The shorter the limbs, the more steeply the draw weight climbs as the bow nears full draw, and the more Strength it asks for the same stored energy.

Horn, Wood, and Sinew

A bow’s limbs must bend, and the longer they are the more kindly they do it. A longbow bends along its whole length and asks least of the archer for what it stores. A shortbow fights her for every pound. A composite bow, built up in layers of horn, wood, and sinew, is short enough to carry and to shoot from the saddle, and the layers give back some of what the short limbs cost — though not all of it, and it costs a great deal more to build. A footman with room to draw takes the longbow. A rider has no such choice.

Height Requirement

Anyone can shoot a shortbow or a composite bow. A longbow must be about as long as the archer is tall, so you must be at least 5 feet 5 inches in height to use one. A shorter archer cannot bring one to full draw.

Shooting from Horseback

A longbow cannot be shot from horseback, whatever the archer’s height or skill. Its lower limb fouls the horse and never clears the saddle. A mounted archer shoots a shortbow or a composite bow.

Attack and Damage

Your attack roll with a bow is a d20 plus your Dexterity modifier plus your Skill Rank in Bows. Strength decides which bow you can shoot; Dexterity decides whether you hit with it.

On a hit, the bow deals the damage listed for its draw force on the Bows table, plus your Dexterity modifier. The damage is Piercing unless the arrow used says otherwise.

Damage, Strength requirement, and price at each draw force are given on the Bows table. A price is for the bow alone, strung, without arrows.

Stringing a Bow

A bow that has no string on it cannot be shot. Fitting a string takes an action, and an archer who carries no spare string cannot fit one. Spare strings are cheap and are sold by the piece (see “Adventuring Gear” below).

Heavier Bows

Bows above 200 lbf exist, but mortals do not shoot them. A giant or a titan may draw 400 lbf without strain.

To extend the table, each additional 5 lbf adds 0.5 to average damage. The Strength formulas above continue unchanged. Prices continue as follows, in copper pieces:

• Shortbow: 6 + 4 × (draw force ÷ 80)³
• Longbow: 12 + 8 × (draw force ÷ 40)³
• Composite Bow: twice the longbow price, plus 60

Round the result off before you charge it: to the nearest 1 cp below 20 cp, to the nearest 5 cp below 1 gp, to the nearest 10 cp below 2 gp, to the nearest 50 cp below 10 gp, and to the nearest 100 cp above that. Then quote it in the largest coin that fits, using two denominations at most.

What the Warbow Costs

A soldier who shoots a heavy warbow for twenty years does not walk away from it. His left arm thickens until the bone itself is misshapen; his shoulder wears through; his spine bends towards the draw. Bodies pulled from old wrecks and old graves are recognisable as archers before anything else about them is known.

Arrows

Arrows are sold by the dozen, at the prices given on the Arrows table. Unless an arrow’s entry says otherwise, an arrow deals the bow’s damage as Piercing damage and does nothing else.

The bow sets how hard the arrow arrives; the head sets what it does when it gets there. An archer who carries only one kind of arrow has decided in advance what every shot will be for.

Armour Categories

Light Armour. Light armour does not set your Armour Class. It remains 10 + your Dexterity modifier, as it is for a character wearing nothing.

Its Resistance Points are not yours to assign. Half of them, rounded up, are against Slashing damage, and the rest are against Piercing damage. At Skill Rank 5 in Light Armour you have 3 Resistance Points against Slashing and 2 against Piercing.

Medium Armour. Your Armour Class is 10 + your Dexterity modifier or 10 + your Constitution modifier, whichever you choose when you don the armour.

You assign its Resistance Points to Bludgeoning or Piercing damage.

Heavy Armour. Your Armour Class is the number given in the armour’s entry plus your Strength modifier or your Constitution modifier, whichever you choose when you don the armour. Your Dexterity modifier does not apply.

You assign its Resistance Points to Slashing or Bludgeoning damage.

Armour Strength Requirement

Medium and Heavy armour must be carried on the frame as well as worn on it, and each such armour lists a Strength score on its table. Light armour has no requirement.

Armour Strength Requirement = the armour’s weight in pounds ÷ 10 + 8, rounded up.

If your Strength score meets the requirement, the armour sits where it was made to sit and costs you nothing. If your Strength score falls short, your Speed is reduced by 5 feet for each point of the shortfall, and if it falls short by 3 or more you cannot wear the armour at all. A Light armour worn beneath another does not count towards the requirement of the armour above it.

Donning and Doffing

Donning armour means putting it on, buckling it, and settling it; doffing it means getting it off. The time each takes is given on the Donning and Doffing Armour table. Neither is an action, and neither can be done in a fight.

Wearing a Garment Beneath

An armour with the Underlayer property may be worn under Medium or Heavy armour. No other pairing of armours is allowed, and nothing may be worn under an Underlayer armour.

The outer armour sets your Armour Class and grants its Resistance Points as usual. The garment beneath grants its Starting Resistance Points and nothing further: your Skill Rank in Light Armour grants no points while another armour is worn over it, though you must still have Skill Rank 1 in Light Armour to gain the garment’s Starting Resistance Points at all.

You dress from the inside out and undress from the outside in. You cannot don the garment while the outer armour is on, and you cannot doff the garment while the outer armour is on: the outer armour comes off first. The times add together, so a Gambeson under a Mail Hauberk takes 11 minutes to don and 6 minutes to doff.

Armour Properties

An armour’s entry names the properties it has, and those properties are given here.

Bespoke. This armour is made to one body. You gain nothing at all from a Bespoke armour made for another creature — no Armour Class, no Resistance Points, and none of its other properties — until an armourer refits it to you, which takes 10 days and costs a quarter of the armour’s price.

Noisy. You have Disadvantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks while you wear this armour.

Proof. A ranged weapon attack made against you from more than 60 feet away deals no damage to you.

Stifling. Iron holds the heat that reaches it and draws the storm down on the man inside it. You have −1 Resistance Points against Fire damage and −1 Resistance Points against Lightning damage while you wear this armour.

Underlayer. This armour may be worn beneath Medium or Heavy armour.

Warm. You have Advantage on saving throws against extreme cold.

Armour by Category

Shield Properties

Barded. While you are mounted, your mount’s Armour Class increases by 1.

Cumbersome (N). You have Disadvantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks while you carry this shield, whether you hold it ready or have it slung. While you hold it ready, you also take a penalty equal to the number in brackets to Dexterity ability checks, to Dexterity saving throws, and to attack rolls made with Dexterity.

Defensive. This shield adds half your Dexterity modifier to your Armour Class, with a minimum of 1, instead of the number in the AC column.

Formation. As a Bonus Action, you can form up with creatures within 5 feet of you who hold a shield with this property ready, and each of them may take a Reaction as you do so to join you. While you are in a formation you can take no action on your turn but Dodge, you can move no more than half your Speed, and you must end your movement within 5 feet of another creature in the formation. You leave the formation if you do otherwise, if you are moved against your will, or if you choose to on your turn.

Count the creatures in the formation. Each of them gains the benefit the Formation Benefits table gives for that number, and only that benefit, against attacks and effects that originate outside the formation.

Adventuring Gear

Most of what the table lists does what its name says and needs nothing further. The items below carry rules of their own.

Backpack. A backpack holds 30 pounds within a cubic foot. What it holds is carried weight like anything else.

Bottle and Jug. A bottle holds a pint and a jug holds a gallon.

Bowstring. A spare string of hemp or sinew with wax applied liberally, carried wound and dry. A wet string stretches and shoots slack. For fitting one to a bow, see “Bows” above.

Candles. A lit candle burns for 1 hour and sheds Bright Light in a 5-foot radius. Tallow candles are sold by the handful and gutter in a draught.

Chain. Ten feet of welded iron links. It has 10 Hit Points, and a creature can burst it with a successful DC 20 Strength (Athletics) check.

Clothes. Squalid clothes are what a beggar wears and what a corpse is stripped of. Traveller’s clothes are sound, warm, and made to be repaired. Fine clothes are cut to display the standing of the wearer, and a creature who wishes to pass as a person of consequence needs them; the GM may call for a Charisma (Deception) check and may rule that no check succeeds without them.

Healer’s Kit. Linen, thread, a needle, and a salve. As an action you can expend a Healer’s Kit to treat one Injury on yourself or on a creature within 5 feet of you (see “Critical Rolls” in “Conditions of Play”).

Lantern. A lantern burns oil and sheds Bright Light in a 30-foot radius. Its panes are scraped horn, and as a Bonus Action you can close the shutter, reducing the light to a 5-foot radius, or open it again.

Lock. A lock comes with one key. Without the key, a creature holding a lockpick can pick it with a successful DC 15 Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) check. Without a lockpick it cannot be picked at all, and must be broken, cut out, or left alone.

Lockpick. A roll of thin steel picks and a tension bar. It is the same steel as a dagger and a tenth of the weight of one, and it costs the same, because the whole of the price is in the fineness of the work. In most towns it is not illegal to own one and it is very difficult to explain owning one.

Oil. Lamp oil is fuel. One pint burns for 6 hours in a lantern, and the hours need not be consecutive: you can put the lantern out with a Utilise action and light it again later, until the pint is spent. Iron left alone goes red, and plate must be wiped down after every wet day; the GM may rule that a Heavy armour needs a pint a month to stay serviceable, and that a suit which goes unoiled for a season shows it.

Poison, Basic. A vial of thickened venom, sold by apothecaries for stated purposes of another kind. As a Utilise action you can coat one weapon or three pieces of ammunition with it, and the coating dries and loses its strength after 1 minute. The first creature struck before then must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or take 1d4 Poison damage and gain the Weakened condition. A creature Weakened by this poison repeats the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending the condition on a success.

Potion of Healing. Drinking a potion takes a Bonus Action and restores 1d4 + 2 Hit Points. Administering one to another creature within 5 feet of you takes the same Bonus Action.

Potion of Magic. Drinking a potion takes a Bonus Action and restores 1d4 + 2 Magic Points. Administering one to another creature within 5 feet of you takes the same Bonus Action.

Quiver. A quiver holds two dozen arrows and is worn at the hip or on the back. It is what makes drawing an arrow part of the shot rather than an act of its own (see “Ammunition”).

Rations, One Day. Dry food that keeps: hard bread, salt meat, cheese, nuts, dried fruit. One pound of it is a day’s food for a Medium creature and two days’ for a Small one (see “Famished” in “Conditions of Play”). A day of it costs a labourer a day of his wages.

Rope. Fifty feet of hemp rope. It has 2 Hit Points, and a creature can burst it with a successful DC 17 Strength (Athletics) check.

Sack. A plain cloth sack that holds 20 pounds, carried at the hip or over the shoulder. A slinger keeps her rocks in one, and draws them from it as part of the shot (see “Ammunition”).

Soap. A cake of hard soap, and no more than that. Washing yourself takes 5 minutes and a source of water. Washing what you wear takes a Long Rest, because the cloth must dry, and you spend that rest in other clothes or in none. A cake lasts a month of ordinary use. No rule turns on being clean. The people you meet may take their own view.

Spell Scroll, Empty. A prepared sheet of vellum, ruled and sized, holding nothing at all. It is the stock a scribe writes a spell onto, and it is worth the price of the skin. A scroll with a spell already fixed on it is priced by that spell (see “Suggested Prices” in “Spellcasting”), and what you pay for is the spell rather than the sheet.

Tent. A canvas tent sleeps three. It is the most expensive ordinary thing in this list, because it is a great deal of cloth and cloth is not cheap.

Tinderbox. Flint, fire steel, and tinder in a tin box. Lighting a candle, a lantern, or a torch with it takes a Bonus Action. Lighting anything else takes 1 minute, and takes longer or fails outright in wind and wet.

Torches. A lit torch burns for 1 hour and sheds Bright Light in a 20-foot radius. A torch is a brand dipped in pitch, and it is made rather than bought wherever there is a woodpile.

Waterskin. A waterskin holds four pints, which is a day’s water for a Medium creature and two days’ for a Small one (see “Thirst” in “Conditions of Play”). The weight on the table is a full skin; empty it weighs a pound.

Oil Will Not Take a Spark

A wick draws oil up a thread at a time and the flame lives on what little it is fed. The pint in the reservoir is not burning and will not begin to: put a lit torch into a puddle of lamp oil and the torch goes out. Oil catches when it is hot enough to give off vapour, and a cold flask on a cold floor never gets there. A character who empties one across a doorway and lays a spark for it has made a slippery doorway.

Rings and Amulets

An amulet is a pendant on a chain or a cord, worn at the neck. A ring is a plain band.

Iron. Struck from a rod and filed round, black unless it is kept oiled. It is what a smith makes in the time it takes to talk to him, and it is the ring a soldier is married in.

Pewter. Cast in a mould, a dozen to the pour, soft enough to mark with a thumbnail and dull within the season. Pilgrims buy them by the shrine gate and lose them without grieving.

Bronze. Cast and then burnished, and it holds a shine longer than pewter and greener than gold. The country people call the pale sort latten and will tell you it is gold if you look willing.

Silver. Drawn, formed and finished by hand, one at a time, and the cheapest metal a goldsmith will admit to working. It is the ring most often found on a hand that has money and no title.

Gold. A third of an ounce of it, which is the weight of a gold coin and worth as much before the goldsmith has touched it. What is paid above that is the making, and it is the smallest part of the price.

Jewels

A jewel is a cut or polished stone. The Jewels table gives the stones a merchant will have and what each is worth loose. A jewel weighs too little to record.

Setting a Jewel

A jewel must be set before it can be worn. Setting costs 1 sp, whatever the stone and whatever the metal, and takes a goldsmith the better part of a day. The price of a finished piece is therefore the price of the ring or amulet, plus the price of the jewel, plus 1 sp.

A pewter ring will hold a diamond as well as a gold one will. No goldsmith will do it without saying something insulting.

An article of gold or silver is never sold for less than the worth of the metal in it, whatever else the buyer thinks of the workmanship or the wearer.

Mounts and Other Animals

Ass. A small grey beast, no taller at the shoulder than a man’s chest, and the cheapest thing alive that will carry a load for you. It bears what a strong man bears and never tires of it, keeps its feet on ground that turns a horse over, and lives on thistles, straw and whatever the roadside offers. It is also the loudest to complain, and when it finally decides it’s gone far enough, it has truly made up its mind.

Ox. A gelded bull, and the heaviest hauler a farm can afford. It is slow, it is patient, it wants no shoes and little grain, and it will draw a loaded cart through mud that stops a horse.

Draught Horse. A heavy cart-horse, bred for the collar. It is faster than an ox and pulls nearly as much, and it costs more to keep than it costs to buy: it wants oats, it wants shoeing, and it is worth half of its purchase price by the time it is done.

Riding Horse. The ordinary saddle horse of anyone with the money for one. It carries a rider at a good pace all day and is trained to nothing else; it will not stand in a fight, and it will not go towards a thing that frightens it.

Warhorse. Trained from a colt to hold its ground in a press, to take a barding, and to strike with hoof and teeth on command. The price is what training costs and what a stallion of the right breeding costs, and it is beyond the means of any adventurer who has not been given one.

An Ox Is a Bank You Can Eat

Everyone who works land will tell you the same thing, and they are right. A horse costs more each year than an ox, and at the end you sell the horse for the price of its hide. An ox you buy for a gold piece and forty pence, work for five years and sell for a gold and twenty, because whatever else he has stopped being he has never stopped being meat.

Harness and Vehicles

An animal needs something to carry the load in and something to hold it on. The Harness and Vehicles table shows items available for the purpose.

Keeping an Animal

An animal eats every day whether it works or not. The Upkeep table gives the cost of feeding and stabling one animal for a day.

Selling On

A beast may be sold at any market. As a guide, an ox fetches most of what was paid for it, an ass fetches something near a half, and a horse fetches less than half.

Barding

Barding is armour for a horse. It is bought and worn as one piece, and an animal wears one barding at a time.

A barding sets the mount’s Armour Class, adding the mount’s own Dexterity modifier, and grants it the Resistance Points listed; neither depends on any Skill Rank, since the mount has none. A barded mount’s Speed is reduced as the entry gives, and the weight of a barding counts against what the mount carries. The Barding table shows the barding available to buy.

Mount and Animal Travel Pace

While travelling outside combat, a group can move at the pace shown on the Travel Pace – Mounted and Drawn table when mounted or drawing a cart. The table states how far the party covers in a period of time. Terrain can bar a pace outright, and the GM decides when it does.

If riding horses, the group can move twice the distance for 1 hour, after which the mounts need a Short or Long Rest before they can move at that increased pace again.

While travelling at an animal’s normal pace, you gain the benefit of the nearest pace at or above its speed that a traveller on foot would gain (see “Travel Pace” in “Playing the Game”). An ox covers 2 miles in an hour, short of any pace a walker keeps, so a party moving at its speed gains the benefit of a Pilgrimage pace. The penalties of a foot pace are not inherited: they fall on the traveller who spends the effort, and a rider spends none.

A party travelling with an animal has Disadvantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks, whatever its pace and whether the animal is ridden, led, or in the shafts. Hooves are loud, harness rings, and a beast answers another beast it hears.

Lifestyle Expenses

Wretched. You live on chance and charity, sleep where the night finds you, and eat what is given or found. Weather and sickness are dangers in their own right, and nobody is looking for you when you do not arrive.

Squalid. A corner of a room shared with strangers, and food that is cheap because something is wrong with it. You are among the sort of people who notice a full purse.

Poor. You spend carefully and go without. The lodging is honest and the food is dull, and neither is anything to be ashamed of.

Modest. A tradesman’s living: your own room, meat some days, and clothes that do not announce your circumstances either way.

Comfortable. You want for nothing you need and have a few things you do not. Innkeepers remember your name and put you in the good room.

Wealthy. You keep servants, or the establishments you stay in keep them for you. What you spend in a week would feed a family for a season, and people who count such things have counted.

Aristocratic. You pay for the best of everything and a staff to arrange it. Your wealth is a matter of public knowledge, and there will be those who feel entitled to a share of it, by petition or by other means.

On Hoards and the Price of Bread

A dragon asleep on its money does a realm no harm at all. It does the realm a service. Coin under a dragon is coin out of circulation, and for as long as the hoard lies still, prices stay honest and a penny buys what a penny should. It is the week after the killing that ruins people. Turn a hoard loose on one market town and bread doubles, and then doubles again, and the widow who put away eleven silver against her old age finds she has put away rather less than three.

Merchants understand this long before lords do, and long before the fighting starts. When word goes round that a company means to kill the dragon, the wise traders stop taking coin and start taking goods, anything at all they can hold and sell afterwards. If the rumour is good enough they may work out that the cheaper course is to see the company never reaches the lair. Heroes are seldom told that the man who sold them their rations has an interest in how it ends.

All of which leaves the survivors with the awkward part. The money is only worth carrying somewhere else, or spending on the things a hoard cannot spoil the price of: land, walls, a mill, and men who will remember who paid them.