Lifestyle expenses provide you with a simple way to account for the cost of living in a fantasy world. They cover your accommodations, food and drink, and all your other necessities. Furthermore, expenses cover the cost of maintaining your equipment so you can be ready when adventure next calls.

At the start of each month, choose a lifestyle from the Expenses table and pay the price to sustain that lifestyle. The prices listed are per month. Your lifestyle might change from one period to the next, based on the funds you have at your disposal, or you might maintain the same lifestyle throughout your character’s career.

Your lifestyle choice can have consequences. Maintaining a wealthy lifestyle might help you make contacts with the rich and powerful, though you run the risk of attracting thieves. Likewise, living frugally might help you avoid criminals, but you are unlikely to make powerful connections.

* Does not require a semi-permanent residence

Each lifestyle has certain bonuses and penalties associated with it:

Wretched

• Resting only restores up to level 1 of Exhaustion.*
• It takes 2 nights of long rests to heal one level of Exhaustion.
• 10% chance every morning to contract a disease, if not already diseased.*
• Cannot regularly bathe or mend clothing.
• Risk of starvation and dehydration.

Squalid

• It takes 2 nights of long rests to heal one level of Exhaustion.
• Cannot regularly bathe or mend clothing.

Poor

• Can only occasionally bathe and mend clothing. (Once a week)

Modest

• Can bathe and mend clothing
• Equipment is well-maintained but frequently scuffed or dirty.
• Access to a Treasure Bag.

Comfortable Heal 2 levels of Exhaustion per long rest. Fine clothing (but not jewelry) is included in this lifestyle Equipment is always well-maintained and polished. Access to a Treasure Bag.
Wealthy

• Heal 2 levels of Exhaustion per long rest.
• Fine clothing and jewelry (non-saleable) are included in this lifestyle
• Equipment is always well-maintained and polished.
• Mundane equipment is replaced as needed.
• You gain a few servants to handle day-to-day chores around the house.
• Access to a Treasure Bag.

Aristocratic

• Heal 3 levels of Exhaustion per long rest.
• Fine clothing and expensive jewelry are included in this lifestyle.
• Equipment is assumed to be well-maintained.
• Mundane and magic (common) equipment is replaced as needed.
• You gain several servants that handle day-to-day chores.
• Access to a Treasure Bag

* Some backgrounds like Hermit or Outlander might ignore these penalties, at GM discretion.

You live in inhumane conditions. With no place to call home, you shelter wherever you can, sneaking into barns, huddling in old crates, and relying on the good graces of people better off than you. A wretched lifestyle presents abundant dangers. Violence, disease, and hunger follow you wherever you go. Other wretched people covet your armor, weapons, and adventuring gear, which represent a fortune by their standards. You are beneath the notice of most people.

You live in a leaky stable, a mud-floored hut just outside town, or a vermin-infested boarding house in the worst part of town. You have shelter from the elements, but you live in a desperate and often violent environment, in places rife with disease, hunger, and misfortune. You are beneath the notice of most people, and you have few legal protections. Most people at this lifestyle level have suffered some terrible setbacks. They might be disturbed, marked as exiles, or suffer from disease.

A poor lifestyle means going without the comforts available in a stable community. Simple food and lodgings, threadbare clothing, and unpredictable conditions result in a sufficient, though probably unpleasant, experience. Your accommodations might be a room in a flophouse or in the common room above a tavern. You benefit from some legal protections, but you still have to contend with violence, crime, and disease. People at this lifestyle level tend to be unskilled laborers, costermongers, peddlers, thieves, mercenaries, and other disreputable types.

A modest lifestyle keeps you out of the slums and ensures that you can maintain your equipment. You live in an older part of town, renting a room in a boarding house, inn, or temple. You don’t go hungry or thirsty, and your living conditions are clean, if simple. Ordinary people living modest lifestyles include soldiers with families, laborers, students, priests, hedge wizards, and the like.

Choosing a comfortable lifestyle means that you can afford nicer clothing and can easily maintain your equipment. You live in a small cottage in a middle-class neighborhood or in a private room at a fine inn. You associate with merchants, skilled tradespeople, and military officers.

Choosing a wealthy lifestyle means living a life of luxury, though you might not have achieved the social status associated with the old money of nobility or royalty. You live a lifestyle comparable to that of a highly successful merchant, a favored servant of the royalty, or the owner of a few small businesses. You have respectable lodgings, usually a spacious home in a good part of town or a comfortable suite at a fine inn. You likely have a small staff of servants.

You live a life of plenty and comfort. You move in circles populated by the most powerful people in the community. You have excellent lodgings, perhaps a townhouse in the nicest part of town or rooms in the finest inn. You dine at the best restaurants, retain the most skilled and fashionable tailor, and have servants attending to your every need. You receive invitations to the social gatherings of the rich and powerful, and spend evenings in the company of politicians, guild leaders, high priests, and nobility. You must also contend with the highest levels of deceit and treachery. The wealthier you are, the greater the chance you will be drawn into political intrigue as a pawn or participant.

The expenses and lifestyles described in this chapter assume that you are spending your time between adventures in town, availing yourself of whatever services you can afford — paying for food and shelter, paying townspeople to sharpen your sword and repair your armor, and so on. Some characters, though, might prefer to spend their time away from civilization, sustaining themselves in the wild by hunting, foraging, and repairing their own gear.

Maintaining this kind of lifestyle doesn’t require you to spend any coins, but it is time-consuming. If you spend your time between adventures Downtime: Work you can eke out the equivalent of a poor lifestyle. Proficiency in the Survival skill lets you live at the equivalent of a comfortable lifestyle.

Mounts require 10 lb. of food a day. 15$ per month covers the cost of feeding a mount. Stabling is 150$ a month. Stabling prices include feed. Source: D&D Lifestyle Mechanics