What would it cost to rebuild a village / small town for 50 - 100 inhabitants?

Question

In our quest, we saved approximately 50 villagers. Their village has been burned down (by normal fire).

They are returning to the village and are going to try to rebuild.

It's the middle summer in an area with the normal range of weather.

We would like to give them enough gold so they can reasonably rebuild. At the same time, being adventurers on a quest to save the world from demons, we'd like to keep as much gold as we can to buy equipment.

The party is level 6, but isn't able to return to the village to help rebuild. The villagers are on their own.

There are a handful of towns reasonably nearby (3 days to a few weeks).

We are using the normal 3.5e rules for gold in a mid-low magic world.

Approximately how much gold would it take for the villagers to rebuild by winter?

You can assume they have a blacksmith, other craftsmen, farmers, and a few leaders.

Answer 1

The exact cost is up to your DM. He is the only one who knows the availability of any resources needed to build a new village. He may even decide that money is not the only thing needed. Workers may disagree to come to the place because they are afraid of a dire bear in the nearby forest; the place may be surrounded by a hard terrain and the materials couldn't be transported there. And so on. The DM can have any in-game or plot considerations. You have to discuss it with him before taking any in-game actions.

To give you a hint about the possible price I'll present you some calculations and considerations.

First of all, you probably don't need to build a house for every person. People in villages usually live in families. So you need one house per family. I know nothing about the number of families there are. Lets assume there are 3 -10 people per family. Then you need 5 – 17 houses. DMG lists a price of 1000 gp for a simple house.

Simple House

This one- to three-room house is made of wood and has a thatched roof.

link

It results in 5000 – 17000 gp.

But medieval villagers often were not hiring architects or labourers to build houses. An average community had every skilled craftsman needed to build a simple house. If that is the case you only need to pay for the raw materials, i.e. 1/3 of the final price (see Craft skill).

If this is true for your rescued vilagers, you need 1666 – 5666 gp.

Note that these prices are average prices recommended by DMG. Your DM can modify them or use entirely different values.

Answer 2

It costs only time and labor effort, assuming available natural resources, people, and tools (they might be hand made). After all, for any sort of currency to be useful, there has to be somewhere to spend it that actually has what you need. Villagers will often find money relatively useless for their day to day and rebuilding needs. The round trip alone to acquire whatever is needed from wherever it is will often take much too long and will arrive too late.

Quality tools will require more, better quality resources and time to obtain or make.

Psionics or magic or exceptional characters (flight, unusual stats or abilities) can shorten the time required (or allow for longer working times - darkvision for the night shift anyone?) and the resources needed.