How Much is Safety Worth?

Let’s think through a couple of FRPG tropes:  In most cases, some powerful person or organization is able to pay a group of “adventurers” enough money for them to risk their lives performing some task.  Granted - the adventurers are expecting to be able to loot their enemies and make a bigger profit, but that’s beside the point.  The point is - Someone has enough money to get powerful people to do their bidding.

So, OK, what else might these powerful, rich, quest givers want?  Well, they’re going to want safety.  They want to make sure that “the bad guys” (their enemies whoever they are) cannot harm them or steal their stuff.  For this they hire guards.  And here in lies the big question:  How much are they willing to pay in order to get the best guards who might actually keep them safe?

The last post discussed taxes and this is why.  If you want your world to make sense, you need to tie some things together.  If you know what the tax base is, you can assign a percentage of that to the defense of your cities (or powerful people).  Now this does get tricky.  Take Brinston for example.  Even if we knew exactly what the budget of the military was - how much is army vs. navy?  How much handles facilities, like the city wall or the naval port?  How much is required for defense of the city?  the Port of Brinston?  the countryside?  the river?  And that defense of the city - what’s police vs. wall guards?

OK - but let’s focus on our actual subject:  How much is safety worth?  Let’s change the focus slightly:  how do you spend money on safety?  One aspect of this is what they are willing to pay for their “castle” or other building that will help keep them safe.  That’s an upcoming edition!  So the two aspects that really seem to matter here are:  people and gear.  You can hire the best people.  You can equip your guards with the best gear.  You might even be able to do both.

So this is where the balancing act comes in.  How much money are these powerful folks willing to spend?  How much do they need to spend?  If massive dragons come flying over the city every week, they need some pretty awesome defenders!  If the worst thing to be found in the city is a couple of pickpockets, then you probably aren’t looking for superheroes and colossus golems.  But appropriately gauging that threat level can be difficult.

So assume that a “normal” powerful person is going to try to err on the side of a little more than they need.  But if we’re talking about the people aspect, there really are two sides:  number and ability.  Since we’re mainly talking about cities and policing units, the number is going to be high.  In nearly every case, a large number of people is necessary, because no matter how good they are, the city guards cannot be everywhere at once.  In so many circumstances, the number is going to be determined by area and not choice.

So we’re back to ability and gear.  If you have people who are extremely well equipped, they may not need to be the best trained.  Conversely, if you have the best trained troops, you may not need to spend as much to equip them.  So what we’re trying to get you as the GM / world builder to do is to think through this choice:  How good do they need to be and therefore how do you get there?  Because (not knowing the rules you’re using), there may be a point at which it is cheaper to hand a mid-ranged guardsman a minor magic item than to pay for a better guardsman.  Does the magic item bring the guardsman up to the level of that better guy?  It might be that much cheaper to buy equipment instead of paying a higher salary every day.

Afraid that we might be beating around the bush, here it is:  Your PCs need to be afraid of the police in your city.  If they aren’t, then they have no worries about what the laws are or being held accountable.  That’s a very dangerous position for a GM to be in.  If the PCs can effectively battle against the entire city guard and come out on top, then they are going to do whatever they want.  Actions need to have consequences.

We’ve been talking about “powerful people”, and we’ve been talking about governments, specifically city or city-state governments.  This is your world that you’re building.  How do you want to establish a powerful enough force in your city(ies), but still make it reasonable?  We think, if you start thinking in terms of how much money your larger cities would have to spend, this might open you up to having vastly more powerful policing forces - whether they choose to focus on numbers, abilities or gear!