My son and I worked on burning up his Dwarf High Captain and he opted to purchase some Dwarven Mail. I am wondering if Dwarven Mail needs to be factored in lifestyle maintenance. If so, what would you recommend the lifestyle resource be.
Lifestyle maintenance is more about how you’re living than what you own. Are you living the life of an impoverished adventurer (camping under the stars, eating dried jerky, poor ale and stew made from some unidentifiable meat if you’re lucky) or a prosperous merchant (living in town, eating well, wearing nice clothing)? You can own dwarven mail and live a rough life, or a life of luxury. Lifestyle maintenance is more about paying the piper for your day-to-day expenses rather than a tax on property.
I guess as a High Captain he’s going to have a pretty high resource maintenance test anyway (at least an Ob 5 or so?) and I imagine he’ll have the resource exponent to go along with it. Heck, the armor itself is putting him at a resource exponent of 6.
Anyway, with regular type gear stuff I’d allow it to be maintained through the lifestyle maintenance test. Something like Dwarven Mail though? It’s so astronomically special that should it ever take damage (which will be very rare) i’d probably want to focus a bit of the story on that anyway. Call a resource test of it’s own for getting it repaired. But I don’t think I’d raise his lifestyle maintenance any just because he had it.
This could lead to a great little adventure, or a series of linked tests for repair… “You mean we have to find a Mithril vein to mine before we can forge new links?!”
Of course, any weapon capable of damaging Dwarven Mail is also a story of its own.