Selling valuable magic items is pretty difficult though. Once you go over 10k you only have a 10% chance/month to sell them in a class one market. That could easily take a year of game time or more, and all the while you are paying out living costs. If you send a hireling to do it you are still paying out their wages, and if they do succeed there is no guarantee that they will make it back with the funds.
Humm…seems a bit unfair to let hireling cost go into the same pool as living expenses, or else the Bard with 7 hirelings and the thug with none are still paying the same living costs, but the bard gets something directly beneficial out of it.
Yes, some of the players have lots of henchmen and try to bring them on every adventure (which I have pointed out as being problematic to xp and gold earning, but nobody listens).
The characters can experiment with some items to figure out what they do, but how do you experiment with a wand or staff to figure out it’s command word? Equally I use some more obscure items from other versions of D&D that are, admittedly, pretty hard to figure out solely by experimentation. But yeah, identification and keeping items is a money sink. Though as my player points out below, it’s hard to sale big ticket items, even at a Size 1 market.
I also may have spread my markets out a bit much because I created the map purely on the borderland, not really thinking about the party wanting to head back into the Empire so just made some estimates of how many days away the bigger cities were. ON average, if a (large) kingdom had a size 1 market capital, how far away would the 2’s, 3’s and 4’s be from it? Maybe my travel time is off for that (though the problem still stands, it is still hard to sale an item even then).
As to answer your question, two players are 8 or 9th level and have 4+ henchmen each, with these being around 6th level. I only charge their living and hiring expenses once a month, and allow them to live low, normal, or high (setting a bottom, middle, and high end for their level range…guessing when the costs listed cover several levels). Last adventure there was something like 6-8 items to identify I think? They all spread the work out themselves instead of hiring someone, and one or two rolls were failed.
Anyway, thanks for the input Alex, as always!
Oh, another question, what constitutes ‘common’ magic items for purposes of magical engineering? I pretty much just treat it as the most plain of plain d&d items (+X gear, elven cloaks and boots, bags of holding, etc). Maybe I’m too harsh with that? Should it basically just be everything that isn’t unique/intelligent/disguised?
Humm...seems a bit unfair to let hireling cost go into the same pool as living expenses, or else the Bard with 7 hirelings and the thug with none are still paying the same living costs, but the bard gets something directly beneficial out of it.
If only non henchmen hirelings count towards living costs then there isn’t that much direct benefit. Having a butler and some guards at your home isn’t much use in a dungeon.
Splitting treasure equally before considering how many henchmen a PC has does cause a bit of a free rider problem though. Although I suppose more henchmen contributes to the whole party’s chances, and you do need to pay their wages out of your share.
Some guards at your home may not be much of a direct benefit, but a troop of mercenaries accompanying you on an overland trek and helping fight off wilderness encounters or sacking and looting cities under your command is another matter entirely.
True, Alex’s examples were all quite domestic though. If mercenaries/men at arms are included in living costs would garrison expenses be included in them at higher levels?
Yeah, that’s the rub. If Alex just means mundane employees and not ‘hirelings’ in the dungeon adventure sense, than sure, that’s kind of what I expected. I imagine the group has butlers, valets, sculary maids, cooks, etc.
But if he meant to include the dungeon exploring hirelings as well… that is what I was disagreeing with.
Yeah, I was just referring to nDervish’s comment about mercenaries. They don’t go into dungeons but can provide more of a tangible benefit then maids and butlers.
…and I was just referring to your comment about household guards, which are just mercenaries who stay at home instead of trekking through the wilderness with you. 
Ahh! too many nested replies!
It is left to your discretion because only the Judge knows what’s common in his setting. My implied default is that a common magical item is anything that isn’t unique, intelligent, or disguised.
Remember that Magical Engineering won’t reveal command words, charges, or exact bonuses. So very often the process is:
- Identify approximate nature of item. “It’s a wand of detecting traps.”
- Decide if it’s worth identifying for use. “Anybody want that?” “Nah…”
This discussion is why I felt that I needed to define further what cost of living expense entails!
Cost of living expense is similar to domain garrison expense in that it’s a minimum you need to spend in order to avoid being penalized. I don’t want to overcomplicate it, but if your players are grumbling…
It will generically include:
- Cost of food and drink
- Cost of housing
- Cost of routine clothing
- Cost of routine entertainment and gifts
The following in-game expenses can be applied against living expenses to a maximum of 50% of expense:
- Cost of renting a specific in-game location
- Cost of any number of artists, craftsmen, laborers, performers, or professionals, employed for personal and household use
- Cost of animal trainers employed for dogs and horses
- Cost of maintaining slaves for personal and household use
- Cost of stabling or feed for 1 warhorse per level of experience, for personal and household use
- Cost of stabling or feed for up to 6 hunting dogs per level of experience, for personal and household use
The following in-game expenses cannot be counted as living expenses:
- Cost of weapons and armor
- Cost of adventuring gear
- Cost of magic items, identification, and spells cast
- Cost of mercenaries and ruffians
- Cost of henchmen
- Cost of excessive spending applied as reserve xp
A 5th level patrician has a living expense of 450gp. He might spend it as follows:
Food, drink, entertainment, rent - 235gp
Maintaining a pleasure slave - 12gp
Maintaining 4 household slaves - 3gp each, 12gp total
Wages of a Kennel master (animal trainer - dog) - 25gp
Wages of a Stable master (animal trainer - horse) - 25gp
Wages of a Personal healer (healer rank 1) - 25gp
Wages of a Personal tailor (master craftsman) - 40gp
Stabling & feed for warhorse - 30gp
Stabling & feed for 6 hunting dogs - 6gp
Patron of a poet (master performer) - 40gp
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"The following in-game expenses can be applied against living expenses to a maximum of 50% of expense:
- Cost of renting a specific in-game location"
If you own the location you live, could you apply the hypothetical cost of renting it?
ALEX: No. But if you’re mortgaging it you can deduct your monthly payments. 
Did we just attempt to add Imputed Expenses to ACKS? LMAO. My Tax Law professors would be proud.
How about stronghold upkeep?
ALEX: The upkeep of a stronghold is part of domain management and doesn’t count as a living expense.
Related: How would you determine the cost of renting a stronghold?
ALEX: I typically use 1/33 of the price as a monthly rent although land price and land rent is an area I’m re-investigating.
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Mortgage interest payments are tithe deductible though, right?
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Are these 450 GP per month from the “Cost of Living” table at the beginning of the equipment chapter?
Is it, at least in rare cases, possible to guess a command word for certain COMMON magic items? Perhaps a semi-mass-produced fireball wand from one ancient empire had a pool of often reused command words to ensure that the mage-soldiers could use the wands despite any filing errors that might separate command word from item.
“After the humiliating defeat of the battle at Zanderqwell, where a clerical error (or deliberately sabotaged) documentation mixed up all the command words of a vital shipment of wands to a Zaharan mage unit, it was mandated that all such wands made in the kingdom would be assigned a standardized command word: ‘DIE IN A FIRE’ spoken in Zaharan. Other common items had their command words similarly standardized to a greater or lesser extent, some items having a handful of competing standards. This rule continued for the better part of a century, losing favor around the start of the 3rd Great Thrassian Rebellion when rebel spell-casters started to intercept shipments of magic items.”
This would probably be rare, but I could see certain incantations and command words gaining popularity in certain eras and regions. Someone who has done a great deal of study in this area (enough to get one or two proficiency levels), might know a couple good guesses.
For my own campaign I’m thinking of making most command-word items either having their command word(s) written invisibly on them, or them being something obvious in the vein of your Die in a Fire example. A Wand of Charm Person should definitely be triggered by the Elvish word for Friend.
One thing I enjoy doing with command word items, when they’re held by someone who is actually using them against the PCs, is to have the command word be part of their villanous mockery in combat.
“And now, young Skywalker, you…will…die.” (The command word to Emperor Palpatine’s wand of lightning is “young”.)
Even better when the PCs think the whole thing is the command word and start yelling it at their enemies.
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This post was a “OH WOW WHY DID I NEVER THINK OF THAT MOMENT” for me.
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This is exactly my interpretation of it as well, for what it’s worth. Live below what is expected of your status and people start treating you accordingly.