the vinegar itself is worth 3cp each, the containers are just clay jars, 1cp each, for the fact that it smells so bad and may have other properties, you will have to ask the alchemist
Shouldn't Alice be able to do that?
Cat's rations ?
How many? The cost for standard groceries is 5sp for 2 rations or half the cost of a ration. If you bargain shop then it could be less. At this point I will ask you to venture out onto the internet and ask the great and powerful Google what a pound of vegetables would cost as compared to standard unskilled wage of 1sp per day, probably way cheaper than 5sp for 2 rations. Any recipe must include: 1lb (dry) of some combination of fruit, meat and vegetables, 1tsp spice, and .2 lbs preservative, salt usually, tallow, or sugar of some kind. According to my calculations, it should be roughly 1sp for a poor ration, 2.5sp for modest ration, and up for higher qualities. Certain items may be found very cheaply especially in towns cut off from regular trade. So let's say Cheap vegetables, potato stew, turnips, carrots would be 1sp per ration and rabbit stew, beef, pork would be ~2sp per ration, preservative would be 5cp per ration. If you are carving up a kill, the tallow and fat used to preserve the ration is in the animal.
Alice has a point that the prices in D&D are all over the place. And the price of raw ingredients in relation to unskilled wage varies enormously from place and society. The more advanced, the more expensive such ingredients are. Also cheaper on the countryside than in a city. I don't think we can compare that with our modern society and I'm not Alice to write a PhD on food prices in medieval Europe.
But considering the unskilled wage is 1sp, the minimum food cost can't be 1sp or an unskilled worker could not survive. To my surprise, AI said they did spend ~80% on food which is insane. From the hand to the mouth, including severe malnourishment I guess. ChatGPT puts the average price of raw ingredients for a meal bought at a market at 5cp which I think is reasonable. 50% of unskilled wage. Maybe a little more.
Here is a list of food prices I found:
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/5e_Trade_GoodsHowever the raw ingredients obviously are only a fraction, there's also spices and salt and the processing which I guess adds up to the enormous cost of full rations. But it's probably mostly a gameplay thing.
So let us say Cat buys a larger quantity of salt and spice which would without doubt be cheaper than a few teaspoons. I think we can save most with that.
The 2014PHB states that 1lb of salt is only 5cp as trade good. So 0.2lbs are 1cp. I think that's too cheap considering Neverwinter is not a seaside city.
Spices are a gamble, I put them at 1sp per oz. And considering a teaspoon of ground spice like pepper weighs about 0.1oz it's also 1cp
Both is prices are surprisingly low. So the minimal ration Cost would be:
5-10cp ingredients
1cp salt
1cp spice
Let's round that up to 1sp for an average ration. I am willing to go up to 1.5sp for a better quality.
Cat could buy high nutrition but nearly spoiled goods and have Alice clean them at the cost of cooking time but I do not think we can serve that to Ashley and Yulya. Wait, they do not need to know... I still think savings would be minimal. Alice could also make salt but I don't think it's worth it.
To keep things simple I'd say Alice can reasonably upcycle food in her next form an for now we go without that
The problem however is quantity. Cat could buy a larger amount, cook rations and store them but we are limited by the time she can occupy the kitchen. I think we were at 4 rations per hour with Alice.
We still have 6 vegetable-mushroom rations because nobody wanted to eat them. Should have bartered some with the refugees. Cat will use 1/4 of such ration with meat from game every time we catch one so we only need 3x game ration and 1x vegetable ration to reach 4 full rations for the party.
So considering we will mainly use the rations in the dungeon where we can't hunt, how many should we make? The weight is a concern. In 2h we could make 8 but at the price we could make 12 in 3h and store some at the guild here. At 1.5sp that would be 18sp.
What do you think?
