It takes a village to raise an adventuring party

So what if you got really gamey with how businesses and establishments in towns work? A friend of mine told me he wants to do a sort of frontiersman campaign where the players establish a township and can invest their treasure from dungeoneering in different kinds of businesses and town things. I think that sounds like a lot of fun, and started wondering how I would do it. I immediately was inspired by Darkest Dungeon, and how you build up the hamlet over the course of dozens of dungeon crawls. 

So a core premise of the campaign would be that the village is a sort of shared character among all the players. Of course your individual characters are your own, but the village is a communal baby that ye all must feed with treasure until it is fat and handsome. All the mangy settlers that live there are their potential future dungeon runners, and they must love them. 

"Fan the flames, mould the metal; we are raising an army"

When the party returns to town, packs laden with loot, they spend their gold on character XP as they would carousing, but, with the added benefit of investing that gold in the town's establishments, eventually leveling up their capabilities as well. Each player may invest their establishment XP however they want, and it is up to the group to decide among themselves if they will pool their resources towards a common goal. It could also be fun for the DM to attach other goals to the leveling requirements for establishments, like acquiring a magic anvil for the blacksmith, or an eldritch tome for the wizard. 

It occurs to me that the town persisting in strength of utility regardless of character death is an interesting potential counterbalance to an XP penalty for said character death. It might shift some player investment from the individual characters and onto the town itself, because like, the town can't die. That is, until the denizens of the dungeons they've been delving gather an army and march on the village...

Anyway, I came up with a handful of establishments to get started with. For now they have 3 vaguely defined levels of investment, but I feel like some could warrant more, such as the Wizard's Tower and the Temple.

General Store 

• Lv 1 - Offers a really slim selection of basic stuff like, rope, backpacks, torches, etc.
• Lv 2 - Sells more advanced adventuring gear like lanterns, telescopes, and collapsible 10ft poles. 
• Lv 3 - Art, gems, and other non-coin treasure items are worth double character XP

Blacksmith

• Lv 1 - Can only repair weapons and armor, not make them. Can only craft tools. 
• Lv 2 - Sells weapons and armor, can temporarily enhance a weapon for 1 session? 
• Lv 3 - Attracts an occasional wandering arcane artisan, selling 1d3 random magic items.

Wizard's Tower: 

• Lv 1 - Can identify magic items. 
• Lv 2 - Apprentices available as hirelings. They can cast detect magic once per day and come with an area of expertise such as languages, monster lore, or alchemy. Also, random potions are available for sale. 
• Lv 3 - Offers permanent enchantments, such as flight, darkvision, remove the need to eat, skin as stone, detect a monster type, etc.

Temple

• Lv 1 - Sells holy water, Can cure poison and mundane disease 
• Lv 2 - Cures blindness/deafness and petrification, and cure magical disease
• Lv 3 - Can reincarnate/raise dead, Removes curses

Tavern (The idea is that vagrants and mercenaries pass through the township in greater numbers as it becomes more famous. Also I wrote the hirelings with Maze Rats + GLOG magic in mind)

• Lv 1 - 1d6 hirelings available from tier 1 per visit to town. Heal 1 hit point per day spent resting. 
• Lv 2 - 2d6 potential hirelings available from tiers 1 and 2, 3 points healed per day spent resting. 
• Lv 3 - 3d6 potential hirelings from any tier, 5 po ints healed per day spent resting

Tier 1 Hirelings

• Porter - Morale: Poor, Cost: 1 coin/day - Carries stuff for the party
• Torch Bearer - Morale: Poor, Cost: 1 coin/day - Holds a torch
• Ruffian - Morale: Poor, Cost: 2 coin/day - Wields a single handed weapon, does not own armor or a shield. 

Tier 2

• Marksman - Morale: Fair, Cost: 5 coin/day - Wields both a ranged and single hand weapon, owns no armor. 
• Man at arms - Morale: Fair, Cost: 5 coin/day - Wields a single hand weapon and shield, wears light armor
• Halberdier - Morale: Fair, Cost: 5 coin/day - Wields a two handed weapon, wears light armor

Tier 3 

• Dwarf - Morale: Fearless, Cost: 10 coin/day - Darkvision, wields two handed weapon, wears heavy armor, 1/2 damage from magic
• Elf - Morale: Fearless, Cost: 10 coin/day - Wields one handed weapon, wears light armor, knows 2 random spells, has 2 magic dice
• Cleric - Morale: Good, Cost: 10 coin/day - Wields one handed weapon and shield, light armor, can cast heal and turn the unholy, 3 magic dice 
• Wizard - Morale: Fair, Cost: 10 coin/day - Single hand weapon, no armor, can cast fireball and sleep, 4 magic dice
• Ranger - Morale: Good, Cost: 10 coin/day - Two single hand weapons, ranged weapon, light armor, can cast cure poison, 1 magic dice, passively detect magic beasts

16 cantrips for fun and profit

Some of these aren't really spells that you choose to cast, and are more like passive magical effects that might be useful. I came up with names for some, but not all. The naming got in the way of actually writing them down. 

1 - Ocular Phalange: An eyeball sprouts out of the tip of your finger

2 - Quaff of the Calf: You can derive an entire day's nourishment from a single child's portion of dairy. Milk, cheese, butter or yogurt. In addition, imbibing spoiled dairy does not cause you any ill effects. 

3 - Hammerhead: Your head turns into a huge carpenter's hammer. While maintaining this spell you may not speak, but can see and hear normally. You may attack with your head as a mace, and are considered proficient with these attacks. 

4 - Caustic Tears: Your tears are a potent acid. You may produce 1 vial of acid per day that you spend entirely coaxing yourself to cry. Your acid tears become inert and mundane 1 week after being shed. You are immune to your own tears. 

5 - Mirrormorph: As long as you maintain this spell, your flesh, hair, and worn belongings become perfectly polished mirror. 

6 - Echo: You may absorb 1 sound of a relatively short length, such as a tiger's roar, cannon fire, or a single sentence, and store it in your brain. You may then recreate this sound at it's original volume, expelling it from your mind in the process. You may overwrite an unused sound with a new one at will. 

7 - Kiss of Death: You may kiss a corpse (or skeleton) to learn how it died. You do not see the death nor learn the circumstances surrounding it, the manner of death simply springs into your mind, such as "Stabbed in the heart" or "Bit by poisonous creature"

8 - Self Petrify: You may turn your flesh into stone over the course of a minute. While you are petrified you are completely unaware of your surroundings. You may unpetrify yourself at will. 

9 - Out of sight: If you are not being directly observed by living eyes, you are invisible.

10 - Sympathetic Telepathy: Passively detect creatures within 30 yards that are experiencing similar emotions as you. If you are nervous, you detect other nervous creatures, etc.

11 - Blip: Teleport 1d10' through open air.

12 - Brain Static: You can read minds at will, but the thoughts are translated into a language you do not understand

13 - You can fly at a running pace for as long as you can hold your breath. You slightly puff up like a balloon 

14 - While under the effects of alcohol you enjoy a bonus to saving throws against poison 

15 - Spider's Sleeve: You may produce up to 50' of rope from your sleeve. If the rope is cut or snapped, take damage as though you were attacked with a sword.

16 - Reverse Lycanthrope: If you bite a mammal there is a 50% chance they will become wereman, and turn into whatever you are on the next full moon.