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Lysander
2010-03-19, 11:41 AM
Obviously there's no correct answer for this since D&D goods and their rl equivalent aren't always priced at the same ratio. And the value of gold would vary too, so 1gp isn't the same value as a rl gold coin of that size.

But in terms of how much money is worth in a typical D&D world, what is a comparable ballpark amount in 2010 U.S. dollars? Is one gp more or less $100? More?

Kurald Galain
2010-03-19, 11:43 AM
(1) go to your local mall
(2) buy a hundred candles
(3) you've now spent a gold piece
(4) ???
(5) profit!

Forever Curious
2010-03-19, 11:44 AM
(1) go to your local mall
(2) buy a hundred candles
(3) you've now spent a gold piece
(4) ???
(5) profit!

Or lack thereof. :smalltongue:

Lysander
2010-03-19, 11:47 AM
I don't really mean in terms of goods. I mean in terms of what people in D&D world consider as wealth.

To me for instance $100 is a lot but not a fortune. It's the cost of a cheap table or a month's cable/internet bill. What does a D&D commoner consider that kind of amount?

DabblerWizard
2010-03-19, 11:48 AM
Fun question.

I am basing my answer on 4e adventuring gear. A backpack, as part of a standard adventuring kit, is worth 2gp.

Consider that this sack is probably bigger than a typical school backpack, since it is made to hold a bunch of stuff, including a bedroll. So we're talking about hiking gear backpacks.

A quick search suggested that such gear costs $100+, or about $100 let's say. If 2 gp = $100, then 1 gp = ~$50.

That's a good enough answer for me... Let's not worry too much about inflation, material quality, etc.

JeenLeen
2010-03-19, 11:51 AM
I'm sure someone else can answer with exact number (how much sp or cp a commoner gets a day/year), but a gp is a lot to commoner economy.

There's a nice article called something like the Economicon. I thought I had a link to it, but don't. It probably still exists, although it might have vanished when the Wizards of the Coast forum was updated.

Vizzerdrix
2010-03-19, 11:51 AM
last I knew, gold wad around $1100 per ounce.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-03-19, 11:51 AM
The most accurate measure of the conversion factor is probably looking at trade goods, some of which can be found on PHB 112. Copper products tend to fall between $1.70 and $1.90 in real life and are 5sp in D&D, a pound of salt is around $3 in real life and 5gp in D&D, and other prices for goods can be found with a bit of searching. It appears that, adjusting for fluctuations in certain materials' value, the dollar:gold ratio is somwhere between 4:1 and 1:4 based on the material--nowhere close to a $100:1gp exchange rate.

I usually revise prices in my games to make the economy function closer to a modern one than a medieval one, under the assumption that magic would have some of the same effects on the world that technology has had in ours. When I do so, I usually calibrate it so 1gp fluctuates between $2-$4 (originally calibrated based on the prices of bread, milk, and other basic foodstuffs), so take that as you will. The assumption that commoners are all subsistence-farming serfs surviving on coppers a month makes absolutely no sense at all in the D&D world.


last I knew, gold wad around $900 per ounce.

That's because gold is a rare commodity being bought and sold with fiat currency. In a world on the gold standard, the price of gold in our world is irrelevant.

Lysander
2010-03-19, 11:54 AM
But you can't really compare D&D goods made by peasants to modern factory assembled imported goods. A backpack or a shirt back then was expensive. And fine glass even moreso. It's why telescopes are 1,000gp.

The same goes for trade goods. Salt for example used to be expensive. They often had to mine it, and it was precious enough to be used as money sometimes. "Salary" comes from salt, and "worth his salt."

Emmerask
2010-03-19, 11:55 AM
(1) go to your local mall
(2) buy a hundred candles
(3) you've now spent a gold piece
(4) ???
(5) profit!

Mass produced candles in our days are a bit cheaper then what they did cost in medieval times. Only the church and nobles could afford beeswax candles
everyone else could only afford candles made out of suet or other grease if at all.

Epinephrine
2010-03-19, 11:56 AM
I usually revise prices in my games to make the economy function closer to a modern one than a medieval one, under the assumption that magic would have some of the same effects on the world that technology has had in ours. When I do so, I usually calibrate it so 1gp fluctuates between $2-$4 (originally calibrated based on the prices of bread, milk, and other basic foodstuffs), so take that as you will.

We tend only to have affordable goods because others don't have the same access. Technology possessed by some results in ludicrous wealth among one group at the expense of those who produce things. Since the peasantry in D&D presumably don't have magic, they would be in a position similar to third world countries, they likely live in poverty.

Kris Strife
2010-03-19, 11:56 AM
last I knew, gold wad around $900 per ounce.

According to the radio this morning, gold is over $1000 US per ounce now and a D&D gold coin weighs about a third of an once, so 1GP = $333.33 by current rates.

Lysander
2010-03-19, 11:58 AM
According to the radio this morning, gold is over $1000 US per ounce now and a D&D gold coin weighs about a third of an once, so 1GP = $333.33 by current rates.

Yeah, but I'm not asking how much we would value the gold. It's how much they value the gold.

lsfreak
2010-03-19, 12:08 PM
Even comparing relative, rather than absolute value, the system is borked. It was never meant to hold up to scrutiny, or if it was it failed horribly. A farmer makes a gold a week or so, while in the same time a group of low-level adventurers can make two or three orders of magnitude more. You simply can't weight the value of a gold piece in a system that's fundamentally flawed.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-03-19, 12:10 PM
We tend only to have affordable goods because others don't have the same access. Technology possessed by some results in ludicrous wealth among one group at the expense of those who produce things. Since the peasantry in D&D presumably don't have magic, they would be in a position similar to third world countries, they likely live in poverty.

The peasantry in D&D most assuredly do have access to magic, in the form of adepts. Even assuming a given town only has a single 1st level adept with absolutely no access to other magic whatsoever (which is a fairly extreme underestimate by the DMG demographic guidelines), the adept can help the peasants in the following ways:

Create water can partially compensate for short dry spells, making crops more productive.
Mending can repair things like yokes, reins, chains, sacks, barrels, etc. to save money for buying other things.
Purify food and drink can help with diseased meat, contaminated wells, etc. until the problem can be resolved.
Comprehend languages can allow a town to deal with more traders for a better variety of goods.
Endure elements can let peasants go out in too-hot or too-cold weather to e.g. head to the barn and warm up the cattle.

Adding 2nd+ level adept spells, or including 1st-level wizards or clerics (and the 5th+ level casters the demographics expect), can expand the options. And that's just a general "walk around helping random people" adept making a minor but noticeable difference; if a group of wizards or temple decides to magically spruce up a town, you can get lots of improvement in a short time.

Then add in the prevalence of adventurers selling less-useful (to them) items, the easier access to goods due to magic (for e.g. safer mining), and so on, and you move closer to modernity (however slowly) and further from medieval life.

Lysander
2010-03-19, 12:12 PM
Even comparing relative, rather than absolute value, the system is borked. It was never meant to hold up to scrutiny, or if it was it failed horribly. A farmer makes a gold a week or so, while in the same time a group of low-level adventurers can make two or three orders of magnitude more. You simply can't weight the value of a gold piece in a system that's fundamentally flawed.

But it does make sense that that treasure hunters risking their lives in ghoul infested dungeons would make a lot more - even the equivalent of millions of dollars.

Jack Zander
2010-03-19, 12:14 PM
A gold piece is 10 days salary for a commoner (aka, minimum wage). Minimum wage where I live comes out to be about $1,800 a month. Commoners earn 3 gp a month so a gold piece to them is what $600 is to us. Notice how this doesn't match up with current prices. That's because of inflation, and manufacturing costs being reduced.

I actually think a lot of the items listed in the PHB are overpriced for what a commoner could reasonably afford.

ericgrau
2010-03-19, 12:16 PM
Last time there was a thread on this it came to about $20 to $100 depending on the good. So around $50 give or take.

The modern price of gold is irrelevant b/c we have the same amount of gold and more people, so it's more rare. Well, that and b/c it's worth whatever you can buy with it and what you can buy with it is different in D&D. Really this is a start on figuring out how much gold there is in the D&D world, not anything that will tell you how much it is worth.

Ravens_cry
2010-03-19, 12:20 PM
Now a gold peice is unlikely to be pure gold, but we do know there is at most one fiftieth of a pound of gold in each gold coin, (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm) or 0.2916* troy ounces, due to the fact one pound of pure gold is worth 50 gp. Ignoring the unknown amounts, or types, of base metal in a standard 3.5 D&D gp, by gold value alone, a gold piece is worth $322.93 in US dollars (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=8110382), by the value of the gold.

Hand_of_Vecna
2010-03-19, 12:21 PM
No matter how you try to work it the system is pretty borked. Even compared to modern handmade crafts alot of things are too expensive. If you just wanna know how much something is valued go of the 1sp a day pay rate and say a silver is about 100 bucks that's $10/hr for a ten hour day or $11.25/hr for an 8 hour day.

Ravens_cry
2010-03-19, 12:27 PM
What with all the adventurers bringing in massive amounts of gold from lost civilisations, looted tombs, and slain dragons, we are seen an economy in the flux of massive inflation. That's why gold is worth so little.
Fridge BRILLIANCE!

Jack Zander
2010-03-19, 12:28 PM
Most everyone in here is comparing apples to oranges. We don't care about how much gold costs. We don't care about what a gold piece can buy you compared to today. The only standard you can use for comparison is wages, as it gives you the true baseline of how much wealth an unskilled laborer earns.

Sorry, business major here. Taking several economics classes and seeing a lot of the same mistakes here as there are in class.

Indon
2010-03-19, 12:30 PM
You'd get a different conversion rate based on whatever you picked as your benchmark.

For instance, 10 feet of chain is 30 gold pieces in D&D. I found a 10-foot length of chain for about 130 bucks. That would put 1 GP as being worth slightly over 4 bucks.

Meanwhile, D&D Crowbar, 2 gp, RL crowbar, 3 bucks. 1 gp for 1 dollar, fifty cents.

1 ounce of ink, 8 gp. You get the idea.


The only standard you can use for comparison is wages, as it gives you the true baseline of how much wealth an unskilled laborer earns.

Untrained labor is 1 sp a day on average. Trained labor is 3 sp minimum wage. Professionals make on average 6 gold a week (edit: at minimum).

Depending on where you pin the conversion rate, you'll still get different values, and what everyone else makes won't make sense.

Lysander
2010-03-19, 12:31 PM
No matter how you try to work it the system is pretty borked. Even compared to modern handmade crafts alot of things are too expensive. If you just wanna know how much something is valued go of the 1sp a day pay rate and say a silver is about 100 bucks that's $10/hr for a ten hour day or $11.25/hr for an 8 hour day.

Without minimum wage laws 1sp might be a lot less than $10 an hour. It might even be the equivalent of twenty or thirty bucks. If you read The Grapes Of Wrath you can see how low salaries can be for manual laborers.

Ravens_cry
2010-03-19, 12:31 PM
@Jack Zander:
Mayhap you canst enlighten us to the ways of wisdom with your cunning learning, oh sage?

Jack Zander
2010-03-19, 12:36 PM
Without minimum wage laws 1sp might be a lot less than $10 an hour. It might even be the equivalent of twenty or thirty bucks. If you read The Grapes Of Wrath you can see how low salaries can be for manual laborers.

Minimum wage laws are irrelevant. The fact remains that 1 sp is to a commoner what 1 day's salary is to your typical McDonald's employee.

Guys, you can't go buy 100 candles or 1 backpack, and say that's a GP right there, because the price of good fluctuates in the market based on a number of variables. What you can compare is what your average person makes today compared to then. If a commoner found a gp on the floor, he'd be pretty excited. How many of you have ever found $600 lying around? Sure, its not a ton of money, but you could get quite a bit of nice things with that.

There's really no other way to look at it other than a comparison of wages.


@Jack Zander:
Mayhap you canst enlighten us to the ways of wisdom with your cunning learning, oh sage?

I'm sorry, I'm not quite as good at explaining as my professor. Was that any better?

CarpeGuitarrem
2010-03-19, 12:36 PM
*plays with narrative money*

Lysander
2010-03-19, 12:38 PM
@Jack Zander:
Mayhap you canst enlighten us to the ways of wisdom with your cunning learning, oh sage?

He's right though. The cost of a product in D&D and in the real world isn't worth looking at. You can't compare the cost of a hammer hand-beaten by a blacksmith over a forge to the value of a hammer mass produced in a factory mold.

Emmerask
2010-03-19, 12:43 PM
Minimum wage laws are irrelevant. The fact remains that 1 sp is to a commoner what 1 day's salary is to your typical McDonald's employee.

Guys, you can't go buy 100 candles or 1 backpack, and say that's a GP right there, because the price of good fluctuates in the market based on a number of variables. What you can compare is what your average person makes today compared to then. If a commoner found a gp on the floor, he'd be pretty excited. How many of you have ever found $600 lying around? Sure, its not a ton of money, but you could get quite a bit of nice things with that.

There's really no other way to look at it other than a comparison of wages.


I agree with that.
And sadly I´ve never found 600$ lying around :-/

Lysander
2010-03-19, 12:45 PM
Minimum wage laws are irrelevant. The fact remains that 1 sp is to a commoner what 1 day's salary is to your typical McDonald's employee.


Minimum wage laws still matter though because that determines what the lowest paid worker's salary is worth though.

A McDonalds worker today for instance is a lot richer than say a Chinese sweatshop worker, even if products are relatively worth more or less the same (in their respective currencies) in both societies.

The reason this is important is it determines whether 1sp is a crappy wage or a slave wage. Which in turn determines whether 1gp is worth 10 daily crappy wages or 10 daily slave wages.

senrath
2010-03-19, 12:47 PM
I ended up calculating 1 gp to be worth roughly $369.30. I'm basing this off of the fact that 1 gp is 1/3 oz, and according to the first hit on Google, gold is currently worth about $1107.89/oz.

This is, of course, assuming that each gp is solid gold.

Edit: Which is pretty much what Ravens cry got.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-03-19, 12:47 PM
Most everyone in here is comparing apples to oranges. We don't care about how much gold costs. We don't care about what a gold piece can buy you compared to today. The only standard you can use for comparison is wages, as it gives you the true baseline of how much wealth an unskilled laborer earns.

Sorry, business major here. Taking several economics classes and seeing a lot of the same mistakes here as there are in class.

I have one major issue with this approach: this works in the real world, but disregards the D&D rules. Take a look at Profession:

You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning about half your Profession check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the profession’s daily tasks, how to supervise helpers, and how to handle common problems.

The problem with this approach is that you're generalizing the unskilled laborer wage to every commoner and ignoring the skill rules.

A commoner with no ranks in Profession and a +0 Wis mod who rolls a 1 on every single profession check makes 5sp a week, about the same as the given wage of 1sp/day. That's what an "unskilled" laborer looks like.
A farmer with 4 ranks in Profession (Farmer) and a 10 Wis who takes 10 on his Profession checks is pulling in 7gp a week, which is 1gp a day--quite a difference, no?
A blacksmith with 2 ranks in Profession (Smith) and a 16 Wis who actually rolls his checks pulls in between 3 and 12gp per week, which works out to between 4 and 16 sp per day.
A 5th-level expert with max ranks in his chosen Profession and a +2 Wis mod, the kind of craftsperson you might see in a mid-sized city, can get up to 15gp per week on a good week.

Unless you're solely looking at vagabonds and hired help, there's no such thing as an "average" wage for the entire population.

Ravens_cry
2010-03-19, 12:49 PM
He's right though. The cost of a product in D&D and in the real world isn't worth looking at. You can't compare the cost of a hammer hand-beaten by a blacksmith over a forge to the value of a hammer mass produced in a factory mold.
That's why I chose gold. At least we now know how about much, if you plane shifted from Greyhawk to the US of A, the gold coins in your purse could buy if you converted their bullion value, the only value they would have in this world, to US currency. Which buys you an Xbox 360 and change.

Jack Zander
2010-03-19, 12:53 PM
Minimum wage laws still matter though because that determines what the lowest paid worker's salary is worth though.

A McDonalds worker today for instance is a lot richer than say a Chinese sweatshop worker, even if products are relatively worth more or less the same (in their respective currencies) in both societies.

The reason this is important is it determines whether 1sp is a crappy wage or a slave wage. Which in turn determines whether 1gp is worth 10 daily crappy wages or 10 daily slave wages.

No, it doesn't. You asked for us to compare a gp to a U.S. Dollar. That's the comparison. When you take a commoner in DnD and give him a gold piece to be compared to U.S. currency, it makes no difference what the elves or the dwarves are making over in the next country. The baseline comparison is average commoner in DnD to minimum wage employee America.

If you rather compare to Chinese sweatshops then we can look at what they earn per day instead. But you'll be looking at Chinese currency, not U.S. Dollars.

@Pair'O'Dice: That's why I'm comparing McDonald's Employees to unskilled laborers, which are in fact your average peasant. We can look at professionals if you'd like. It's not uncommon for people today to earn the rough equivalent of 1gp or more a day.

Indon
2010-03-19, 12:55 PM
Minimum wage laws are irrelevant. The fact remains that 1 sp is to a commoner what 1 day's salary is to your typical McDonald's employee.

Okay, let's run with this. 40 hours at 8 dollars an hour is 320 dollars, presumably the equivalent of 7 silver. This puts our gold as being worth 457 dollars per GP.

Level 2 adventurers almost have more wealth than the average american will earn in their lifetimes. Level three adventurers are millionaires.

Meanwhile, Bill Gates has wildly epic WBL.

The D&D economy makes no sense. Wages are just as good a point to compare as any other, because aside from the single figure you use as a point of comparison, everything else is going to seem absurd.

And even wages offer multiple possible standards. Is 1sp/day a McDonalds employee's salary, or the salary of a sweatshop worker in China (which can easily be under 1 USD)? What if we compare the labor of a skilled entry-level professional (14 Wis, 4 ranks, average roll of 16.5 for 8.25 gold a week) with a RL entry-level professional?

And whichever standard you pick, other wage levels will make no sense. If you use the McDonalds worker, then basic trained labor pays twenty-four dollars an hour and entry-level professionals make hundreds of thousands a year, and sweatshop workers are unpaid slaves. If you use the sweatshop worker, D&D professionals don't get paid jack. If you use the professional, nobody else gets paid what you'd expect. And so on.

The numbers do not match up.

Lysander
2010-03-19, 12:57 PM
That's why I chose gold. At least we now know how about much, if you plane shifted from Greyhawk to the US of A, the gold coins in your purse could buy if you converted their bullion value, the only value they would have in this world, to US currency. Which buys you an Xbox 360 and change.

The cost of gold in the real world isn't worth looking at either though. Gold has no inherent value other than what we decide its worth. A medieval society with wizards is going to value a piece of gold differently than modern America. Gold shouldn't be treated differently than products in that it's only worth what people are willing to pay for it.

dspeyer
2010-03-19, 12:59 PM
I put together a big table a while back (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=111169).

The price ratios in DND and reality are quite different. Weapons there are expensive; labor is cheap; metals are all over the place. Strangely, cloth is cheap there -- it certainly wasn't in mideival europe.

If you just want a rough ballpark figure, $30 is a good one.

lsfreak
2010-03-19, 12:59 PM
Minimum wage laws are irrelevant. The fact remains that 1 sp is to a commoner what 1 day's salary is to your typical McDonald's employee.


I might be mistaken, but iirc that 1sp a day also assumes that the worker gets most of his food from subsistence farming. That 1sp a day isn't enough for a person to live off of, it's enough for a person to live off of when they're not buying any food.

You're also failing to take into consideration other things, like the peasant possibly owning their own house after having built it, and the fact that the McDonald's employee still likely has quite a bit left over for fun stuff (like D&D books or game consoles) that the peasant isn't going to have off that 1sp a day. So now that 1sp doesn't cover food, rent, or any kind of luxury, but the bare essentials for survival - the tools you need to complete your craft, and what little food you can't grow yourself. So take the McDonald's employee, cut out all the money that doesn't go to food, gas, and their work clothes, and you've got a more accurate representation of that 1sp/day.

Even if the dedicated treasure-hunters make a lot, it's a ridiculous amount. The average 10th-level adventurer has the equivalent of 1400 years of wealth. For the flawed translation into modern wealth, that's like someone earning $23 million in treasure-hunting their first two months, and with average, expectable finds.

Emmerask
2010-03-19, 01:01 PM
That's why I chose gold. At least we now know how about much, if you plane shifted from Greyhawk to the US of A, the gold coins in your purse could buy if you converted their bullion value, the only value they would have in this world, to US currency. Which buys you an Xbox 360 and change.

While gold value is much more accurate then common goods I do think labor is the way to go for comparison because

a) we don´t really know how much gold there is in the d&d world especially with all the different planes you can visit.
b) we don´t know how pure a gp really is in d&d (I very much doubt pure gold)

Jack Zander
2010-03-19, 01:02 PM
Things aren't going to match up when comparing Mercantilism with Capitalism.

What I am saying is that the best way to describe how a commoner feels about 1 gp, is to compare it to how you would feel if you had/found $600.

Yes the DnD money system isn't perfect. I've already said that many of the prices should be dropped (it takes a few days salary for one family-sized meal?). But you have to work with what constant they give you, which is wages.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-03-19, 01:02 PM
@Pair'O'Dice: That's why I'm comparing McDonald's Employees to unskilled laborers, which are in fact your average peasant. We can look at professionals if you'd like. It's not uncommon for people today to earn the rough equivalent of 1gp or more a day.

You don't really have a baseline for what exactly a McDonald's worker is. Is he an unskilled laborer as you claim, or is an unskilled laborer a day laborer hanging out at a 7-11 or a sweatshop worker? How do we know it's not someone with 4 ranks in Profession (Cashier) or the like? As Indon pointed out,


And even wages offer multiple possible standards. Is 1sp/day a McDonalds employee's salary, or the salary of a sweatshop worker in China (which can easily be under 1 USD)? What if we compare the labor of a skilled entry-level professional (14 Wis, 4 ranks, average roll of 16.5 for 8.25 gold a week) with a RL entry-level professional?

And whichever standard you pick, other wage levels will make no sense. If you use the McDonalds worker, then basic trained labor pays twenty-four dollars an hour and entry-level professionals make hundreds of thousands a year, and sweatshop workers are unpaid slaves. If you use the sweatshop worker, D&D professionals don't get paid jack. If you use the professional, nobody else gets paid what you'd expect. And so on.

The whole thing is out of whack, but at least you can compare the prices of given commodities with prices of real-world goods, where a "typical" worker's stats in both the real and D&D are basically unknown.


What I am saying is that the best way to describe how a commoner feels about 1 gp, is to compare it to how you would feel if you had/found $600.

If and only if you assume that the 1sp/day salary is that of the typical worker, which has not been demonstrated to be the case.

Rappy
2010-03-19, 01:05 PM
Official word of Wizards of the Coast is that 1 GP = $20.

But don't let that stop the interesting discussion here, I'm watching with interest. :smallbiggrin:

Tinydwarfman
2010-03-19, 01:08 PM
What I don't get is the ridiculously over-inflated cost of magic items. A +5 sword should not cost as much as a small country. It's just not that useful or valuable.

senrath
2010-03-19, 01:10 PM
What I don't get is the ridiculously over-inflated cost of magic items. A +5 sword should not cost as much as a small country. It's just not that useful or valuable.

I dunno. I think I'd rather have the sword than the country.

Indon
2010-03-19, 01:10 PM
Yes the DnD money system isn't perfect. I've already said that many of the prices should be dropped (it takes a few days salary for one family-sized meal?). But you have to work with what constant they give you, which is wages.

It's D&D. All of the amounts are constants.

And none of them make sense in context of each other. Including the values you could get from wages.

We've seen the McDonalds standard. What happens if we use a 100K/year entry-level professional instead?

We can assume an average entry-level professional would have a +4 to his roll, with 10 wis and an average roll of 10.5, so 14.5 average result for 7.25 gold a week.

Our 100K divided into bite-size weekly wages (using 50 as the amount of weeks in the year because I'm crazy lazy) gives us 2K a week.

This gives us a conversion rate of 1 gold to 275 dollars.

Under this standard, McDonalds workers make about 193 dollars a week, and under 5 dollars an hour. A sweatshop worker makes a third of a copper a day if they're lucky. Bill Gates has over 150 billion GP.

The D&D money system isn't just imperfect. It's unworkably absurd.

Jack Zander
2010-03-19, 01:10 PM
If and only if you assume that the 1sp/day salary is that of the typical worker, which has not been demonstrated to be the case.

Not typical worker. Untrained Laborer. As in the job doesn't require a high school degree. As in minimum wage. That is our baseline. Someone without a profession skill in DnD compared to someone who never learned a trade in real life.

lsfreak
2010-03-19, 01:11 PM
What I don't get is the ridiculously over-inflated cost of magic items. A +5 sword should not cost as much as a small country. It's just not that useful or valuable.

Oh, that reminded me of something else I was going to include in my treasure-hunting thing: you have 1400 years of wealth at level 10 ("$23 million"), but you still need 20 times that just to build yourself a castle.

Ravens_cry
2010-03-19, 01:13 PM
The cost of gold in the real world isn't worth looking at either though. Gold has no inherent value other than what we decide its worth. A medieval society with wizards is going to value a piece of gold differently than modern America. Gold shouldn't be treated differently than products in that it's only worth what people are willing to pay for it.
And pieces of paper with dead guys printed on them are going to be exactly zero value to anyone in the D&D world, except as pulp for paper. A D&D gp is worth, today, $322.93 US dollars to the modern world by the value of its materials, to the modern world.
3 100 dollar bills are worth less then 4 sp, the price of a sheet of paper in D&D.
The question is unsolvable, in this not at all trained in economics amateurs opinion. We change the baseline, we change the answer. Therefore, something must be wrong with the question.

Ozymandias9
2010-03-19, 01:13 PM
There's really no other way to look at it other than a comparison of wages.

Actually, wages alone is only sufficient if the relative quality of life(relative, that is, to the quality of life of the people in the economy as a whole) of the people in question is similar. If there is a more significant gap between the quality of life of a Commoner and an Aristocrat than there is between a McDonald's worker and a CEO, that has to be accounted for.

From a theoretical perspective, what we're looking to do is convert both commoner wages and minimum wage into utils, and then compare.

Unfortunately, utils are a purely theoretical tool, so we have to find a reasonable simulacrum for the process. A good option, off the top of my head, would be to eliminate average disposable income and compare non-disposable income. I believe the same section covering wages covers it for Commoner. We just merely need someone to find the average income and average disposable income for a minimum wage worker (I can try to look these up later, but I haven't the time now).

From there, (Income)-(Disposable income)=(Non-disposable Income). From there it should be a simple conversion. It's still not perfect, but it should give the same position relative to the economies in question as a whole.

Indon
2010-03-19, 01:15 PM
Official word of Wizards of the Coast is that 1 GP = $20.

But don't let that stop the interesting discussion here, I'm watching with interest. :smallbiggrin:

Oh? Oooooh, this'll be fun. Under that standard:

Untrained labor makes 14 dollars a day.
Trained labor makes 42 dollars a day.
Our entry-level professional makes 145 dollars a week and about seven thousand dollars a year.
A level 2 character has about 40K dollars. A level 20 character has at least 12 million.
Bill Gates can buy just about any campaign setting that doesn't explicitly take place in a multiverse.

Jack Zander
2010-03-19, 01:16 PM
We can assume an average entry-level professional would have a +4 to his roll, with 10 wis and an average roll of 10.5, so 14.5 average result for 7.25 gold a week.

How can you assume that? (ignoring that the profession skill is completely borked) entry level persons probably only have 1 rank in their profession.

Emmerask
2010-03-19, 01:18 PM
The whole thing is out of whack, but at least you can compare the prices of given commodities with prices of real-world goods, where a "typical" worker's stats in both the real and D&D are basically unknown.


Okay 1 pound of salt costs lets say 1$ (i´m not that familiar with us prices)
the d&d price for 1 pound of salt is 5gp

which means that 1$ is worth 5gp which also means a pig will cost you 0.6$ (3gp) :smallbiggrin:

So no comparing common goods is not the correct way to determine the worth of 1gp

Jack Zander
2010-03-19, 01:19 PM
The question is unsolvable, in this not at all trained in economics amateurs opinion. We change the baseline, we change the answer. Therefore, something must be wrong with the question.

The problem is the DnD system of economy is terrible and not based off of anything. I'm using wages as the best possible unit of comparison.

JaronK
2010-03-19, 01:19 PM
One of the rules I've used in games is that adventurers tend to destroy towns they're in. They bring oversized creatures and burrowing creatures into towns, damaging the roads. They themselves might have Permanent Enlarge Person and damage the tavern floors when they walk in. They cause all kinds of havok and often stir up local monster populations. As such, the PHB prices represent the price mark ups the locals charge to adventurers only, which is why the prices are so high and so seemingly random.

Why do you need $500 million to build a castle at level 10? Does Wall of Stone no longer exist? Fabricate? Come on!

JaronK

Lysander
2010-03-19, 01:23 PM
Okay 1 pound of salt costs lets say 1$ (i´m not that familiar with us prices)
the d&d price for 1 pound of salt is 5gp

which means that 1$ is worth 5gp which also means a pig will cost you 0.6$ (3gp) :smallbiggrin:

So no comparing common goods is not the correct way to determine the worth of 1gp

And by that reasoning, pegasus eggs are only 2,000gp which means I can buy a winged horse egg on ebay for just 400 bucks.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-03-19, 01:24 PM
Not typical worker. Untrained Laborer. As in the job doesn't require a high school degree. As in minimum wage. That is our baseline. Someone without a profession skill in DnD compared to someone who never learned a trade in real life.

Again, you're assuming "unskilled laborer" = minimum wage laborer. I'm pointing out that "unskilled laborer" is not the typical minimum wage worker, and should really mean someone who like a day laborer or sweatshop worker. Your actual "typical" worker at McDonalds or WalMart or whatever has a certain amount of skills and training and would make more than that--but we don't know how much, because their stats are so variable.


Okay 1 pound of salt costs lets say 1$ (i´m not that familiar with us prices)
the d&d price for 1 pound of salt is 5gp

which means that 1$ is worth 5gp which also means a pig will cost you 0.6$ (3gp)

So no comparing common goods is not the correct way to determine the worth of 1gp

Doing that has the same problem as looking at the 1sp/day standard--you're taking a single data point and generalizing. The reason looking at goods works is that we have 10-20 or more points we can look at and find some sort of average.

Jack Zander
2010-03-19, 01:30 PM
Whew, feels like 4chan. I can't keep up with the new posts and I've missed a lot of points. Before I go for today I'll restate my original argument.


I don't really mean in terms of goods. I mean in terms of what people in D&D world consider as wealth.

To me for instance $100 is a lot but not a fortune. It's the cost of a cheap table or a month's cable/internet bill. What does a D&D commoner consider that kind of amount?

Based on the above question, to find out the reaction one would have to finding 1 gp in DnD and finding its equivalent here is based on wages, and the only realistic comparison we can make is based off of those without professions. Therefore a person in DnD who finds 1 gp will produce the same reaction as a person today who finds $600.

End of story for me. If you want to try and go into specifics it simply won't work. The DnD economy was not well planned out. This is simply the best possible solution to the problem.

Emmerask
2010-03-19, 01:33 PM
Doing that has the same problem as looking at the 1sp/day standard--you're taking a single data point and generalizing. The reason looking at goods works is that we have 10-20 or more points we can look at and find some sort of average.

Porlbem with goods simply is we don´t know the availability / production costs compared to what is now which the salt example shows quite good.
So even if you use 20 or so goods the outcome will be flawed.

Emmerask
2010-03-19, 01:34 PM
Whew, feels like 4chan. I can't keep up with the new posts and I've missed a lot of points. Before I go for today I'll restate my original argument.



Based on the above question, to find out the reaction one would have to finding 1 gp in DnD and finding its equivalent here is based on wages, and the only realistic comparison we can make is based off of those without professions. Therefore a person in DnD who finds 1 gp will produce the same reaction as a person today who finds $600.

End of story for me. If you want to try and go into specifics it simply won't work. The DnD economy was not well planned out. This is simply the best possible solution to the problem.

Again I do agree...
And I really want to find 600$ now to see how it feels :smallbiggrin:

Indon
2010-03-19, 01:35 PM
How can you assume that? (ignoring that the profession skill is completely borked) entry level persons probably only have 1 rank in their profession.

There is no character level with a minimum rank of 1. Having fewer than max ranks would imply being a lazy underachiever - which, unlike in real life, can admittedly actually have an impact on how much you're paid. *rimshot*

But you get my point - the amounts from the Profession skill won't even match up with themselves, let alone the numbers from any other part of the system. Similarly, the goods and services won't match up against each other in any sensible way.

There is basically not enough consistency in the D&D economic system to be able to draw meaningful conclusions about the exchange rate - there is no best possible solution because all possible solutions are bad. There is only inconsistency that we can use to make fun of the system.

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-03-19, 01:43 PM
Based on the above question, to find out the reaction one would have to finding 1 gp in DnD and finding its equivalent here is based on wages, and the only realistic comparison we can make is based off of those without professions. Therefore a person in DnD who finds 1 gp will produce the same reaction as a person today who finds $600.

End of story for me. If you want to try and go into specifics it simply won't work. The DnD economy was not well planned out. This is simply the best possible solution to the problem.

Yet again, why do you persist in using the unskilled laborer baseline? If an unskilled laborer is someone who works at McDonalds, they might be happy to find $200. If an unskilled laborer is a day laborer who hangs around Home Depot in hopes that someone will give them a job that day, they might be excited to see $10. If an unskilled laborer is a high school student working a summer job, they might be happy to find $80. Profession (Intern), Profession (Cashier) and similar don't seem like unskilled jobs to me in this context.

You're using circular reasoning. You assume you know what a common laborer equates to and set the average wage based on that, then assume that you can judge what the average worker would be "happy to find" based on what the average wage is! If you want to bow out of the argument, that's fine--I've about reached that point myself--but don't claim to have produced the best possible solution.

Mongoose87
2010-03-19, 01:43 PM
The best way to do this is probably a sort of DnD CPI. Make yourself a nice little bundle of all the things necessary for a year of life, in DnD. Now, price it out in dollars and in GP. Compare your results. Smile happily as you realize you're now an amateur economist.

Sliver
2010-03-19, 02:04 PM
There is no character level with a minimum rank of 1. Having fewer than max ranks would imply being a lazy underachiever - which, unlike in real life, can admittedly actually have an impact on how much you're paid. *rimshot*

The difference between a trained skill and an untrained one is a single rank (not bonus, it can even be a +0.5) and a commoner that maxes his profession will have little of anything else, and commoners don't really earn enough to pay for living, but do everything inside their community (food, clothing, all those stuff) so I hardly believe they are that focused on the profession skill.. How about some points in survival?

LibraryOgre
2010-03-19, 02:08 PM
My rule of thumb is that 1gp is about $20. This makes a silver about $2, and a copper about $.20. I use this rule of thumb when pricing things, and it works pretty well.

Tinydwarfman
2010-03-19, 02:20 PM
My rule of thumb is that 1gp is about $20. This makes a silver about $2, and a copper about $.20. I use this rule of thumb when pricing things, and it works pretty well.

Gah! If that's true, you're spending 40000 on a sword that is 5% more accurate, and does 1 extra damage! O_o You're also spending a million bucks on a sword that is 25% more accurate. It's ridiculous!

LibraryOgre
2010-03-19, 02:30 PM
I ended up calculating 1 gp to be worth roughly $369.30. I'm basing this off of the fact that 1 gp is 1/3 oz, and according to the first hit on Google, gold is currently worth about $1107.89/oz.

This is, of course, assuming that each gp is solid gold.

Edit: Which is pretty much what Ravens cry got.

My problem with this approach is that it better answers "What would it cost to buy a gold piece" rather than "What is the value of a gold piece"? Value is somewhat independent of the metal... it is measured more in what can be bought with a given coin, rather than what the value of the metal is.

If you're going with ~$370/gp, you're looking at its value being such that you can get a night in a good hotel room for 1gp/night ('cause $370 a night is a not-bad hotel room). You're saying that a bog-standard sword is five thousand dollars, and a crossbow is almost $13000.

Kurald Galain
2010-03-19, 02:32 PM
You're saying that a bog-standard sword is five thousand dollars, and a crossbow is almost $13000.

I blame taxes.

LibraryOgre
2010-03-19, 02:43 PM
Gah! If that's true, you're spending 40000 on a sword that is 5% more accurate, and does 1 extra damage! O_o You're also spending a million bucks on a sword that is 25% more accurate. It's ridiculous!

Truthfully, I'd blame that more on the "It is a flat 300gp for masterwork" moreso than the rule of thumb (which predates 3e by a number of years; in fact, when I came up with it, 1sp was a dollar and 1cp was $.10). If you translate it to percentages, instead of flat GP, it becomes that a masterwork long sword is 60gp, or about $1200.

And you're looking at the price of a +5 sword slightly wrong. It is not "It will make you 25% more accurate"... it is "It will make a man of average strength and no training fight as well as a warrior of many years of experience, or strike as hard as the strongest half-orc." While, mathematically, it's only 25%, it's also something that will effectively boost your strength 10 points when attacking.

Hand_of_Vecna
2010-03-19, 02:44 PM
I just wanted to point out that there is no real world equivelant of an adventurer. It would be like if every week or two I went out and killed a murderer, drug dealer or rapist and sold all their stuff like the boondock saints did only without having the police after me and being able to sell everything not just what I can shove in my pockets.

LibraryOgre
2010-03-19, 02:50 PM
I just wanted to point out that there is no real world equivelant of an adventurer. It would be like if every week or two I went out and killed a murderer, drug dealer or rapist and sold all their stuff like the boondock saints did only without having the police after me and being able to sell everything not just what I can shove in my pockets.

The best way to see adventurers, IMO, is to watch old Westerns. You're John Wayne.

Mastikator
2010-03-19, 03:06 PM
Economics in D&D was pulled out of the collective asses of the WOTC, if you want any sense of realism I suggest you completely throw out the economics entirely (every last bit now) and just make it up as you go along using only your common sense, you'll come 100 times closer and it will make more sense.

Forget about "market values". Think about supply and demand, of raw material and producers, keep in mind that there is no such thing as mass-production, everything is hand-crafted. Don't use the RAW crafting system. Use this system, you use raw materials and tools to construct things. It doesn't cost 1/3rd of the cost in gold to craft a half-plate, it costs 50lbs of iron (or steel if you prefer it to be made of steel), leather straps and the appropriate tools to craft a half-plate.
The price you pay for these kinds of equipment is the price of the craftmans unique skills and time.

And for magic items? Weird exotic and components like blink-dog claw clippings and beholder droppings. I don't know the specific, just make stuff up, it doesn't have to make sense, it's magic.

Prices will vary depending on where you are. As they should.

Everytime I look at the economics of D&D I want to puke.



And for the sake of being OT instead of just a raving loon.
1 pound of gold is worth 50 gp, therefore 50gp weighs 1 pound.
1 pound is 16 ounces
According to http://www.goldprice.org/gold-price.html 1 ounce is worth 1105 USD (at the time of me posting this).
Therefore 1gp = 353 USD.
A regular full plate is worth about half a million dollar.

Ashiel
2010-03-19, 03:08 PM
I always estimated the average gold piece to be worth about a $100 compared to the going rates in our area. Instead of basing it off what individual items or trade good were worth, I compared it to services.

For example; a night's stay at a nice inn is 2gp or $200; 5sp or $50 for a modest one, 2sp or $20 for a crappy motel that offers little more than a bed and local tv.

The cost of a meal. If you go to an averagely cheap restaurant, a full meal can run upwards to $10 or 1sp; say a cheap buffet or fast food restaurant with a full meal (food, soup, side order, and drink). If you go to an higher class restaurant like Applebees, it can run you about $30 or 3sp per person (meat, side dish, salad, soup, and drink - maybe an appetizer). If you go to a really nice restaurant, like a steak-house; it's very possible to drop $50 or 5sp per person on the food. Such meals are extravagant to people like myself, who tent to stick with the "poor" meals, and try to get good deals on food when possible.

Most untrained laborers in D&D supposedly pull at least 3gp per week. A commoner taking 10 on a profession or craft checks can generally pull 5gp per week, assuming they don't have a penalty. That would mean that minimum wage was around $300 a week; or $1200 a month before taxes.

Around North Carolina, that sounds about right actually. After taxes I was pulling about $800 a month at a roughly minimum wage job, and was making about $300 per week before taxes; working a regular full-time job that didn't require any special training or proficiencies.

Commoners in D&D aren't as bad off as most people seem to think they are. It mentions in the DMG that most of them need to be self sufficient to survive after taxes, housing, and similar expenses. How do they be self sufficient? Well while working members of the household are out making some 300 copper pieces, the rest of the family is cooking their own meals; sewing their own clothes; collecting their own eggs; growing their own vegetables; chopping their own firewood; and so forth. That way one is off making 3-5gp at a job, the rest of the household is taking 10 on their profession or craft checks to pull in 5gp worth of self sufficiency.

What is it like for someone working on their own, without a family of some sort to work together with? Well, it's about like it is in real life. It sucks. You'd need to work twice as hard, skip meals, and be incredibly frugal with your money. You will be scraping by, and a sudden setback can be devastating. You likely cannot afford health-care. You likely cannot afford luxuries like eating at a restaurant that you like, or sleeping in a nice inn while traveling. You may even have to sleep at a friend's house 'till you get on your feet; or even in a tent (living out of your car). :smalltongue:

It's worth noting that typical families can afford small luxuries or even emergency investments in a D&D game. After a few weeks, a typical family could afford a potion of cure minor wounds which can stop someone from dying (stabilize) if they get injured in an accident if administered quickly; and could afford on oxen for doing labor (20gp), and so forth. Professionals like blacksmiths can afford more; earning around 7gp or more per week (10 + 4 ranks, possibly +1 to +4 from intelligence, wisdom, or skill focus). Such professionals can afford to eat at fancy restaurants at least once a week; or choose to buy things instead of making them themselves.

For these reasons, I've never had a problem with the D&D economies as they are presented within the rules. In fact I've felt that it is perhaps one of the most elegant setups that I could have possibly asked for.

Food for thought.

Thajocoth
2010-03-19, 03:14 PM
I know there's an exchange rate for US$ to WoW Gold... A few years back, (about a year after WoW was released; maybe 2...) they did an analysis of that and found that, based on the exchange rates, Azeroth would've been one of the top 10 richest nations on the planet if it was a real place. I'm sure the exchange rate has gone down since then from over-farming, as has the value of the US$.

But for D&D... I know there's an MMO for it now. See if there's an exchange rate there.

B0nd07
2010-03-19, 06:32 PM
In doing some comparison of the PHB (3.5) and the Modern core rulebook for my hybrid DnD/Modern campaign, I came up with the following conversion (since I chose to use Gp instead of purchase DC):

Cp 10 cents
Sp $1
Gp $10
Pp $100

This seems to fit most most items with some adjustments where needed.

Runestar
2010-03-19, 06:58 PM
Ironically, wotc did do the calculations a few years back. No one saw the memo? :smalleek:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ask/20061110a


Q: What is the "exchange value" of the D&D gold piece compared to today’s real world dollar? It would be interesting to know how wealthy our characters are, compared to modern-day prices...
--Luca

A: Well, first we’d need to determine the size of a gold piece. The US Mint currently issues American Eagle uncirculated gold coins in 1/10, 1/4, 1/2, and 1 ounce sizes (or troy ounces to be more precise, a unit of measurement fairly close to an ounce that -- according to wikipedia -- was once used to measure precious metals, black powder, and gemstones… which makes it the coolest unit of measurement ever, at least in my opinion). Also according to wikipedia, the doubloon weighed in at 0.225 troy ounces, and the ducat at 0.1125 troy ounces (to use two sample coins).

So let’s generously assume a D&D gold piece contains approximately 1/4 ounce of gold (the coin itself might weigh more, depending on the purity of the coin, etc.). Taking a look at today’s prices, gold is currently trading at around $580 per ounce. That means a D&D gold piece might be considered the equivalent of roughly $145.

Now, let’s take a look at some sample character wealth. Pg. 135 of the DMG lists wealth by level. A 2nd level PC has 900gp (or $130,500), a 10th level PC has 49,000gp ($7,105,000), and a 20th level PC has 760,000gp (a whopping 110,200,000).

If you think that’s a lot of wealth, take a look at the price of goods in D&D. Let’s examine a sampling of goods we first looked at on 10/11. A mug of ale costs 4cp ($5.80), a battleaxe costs 10 gp ($1,450), a greatsword costs 50gp ($7,250), a suit of full plate armor costs 1,500gp ($217,500). How about something really pricey? A ring of three wishes costs 97,950gp ($14,202,750), a holy avenger costs 120,630gp ($17,491,350), and an iron flask costs 170,000gp ($24,650,000 -- greater than the gross domestic product of Sri Lanka)!

If these prices astound, let me crib from the 1st edition PHB: “Think of the situation as similar to Alaskan boom towns during the gold rush days, when eggs sold for one dollar each and mining tools sold for $20, $50, $100 or more! Costs in the adventuring area are distorted because of the law of supply and demand – the supply of coin is high, while supplies of equipment for adventurers are in great demand.”

True, there are a lot of assumptions in the above calculations, but there you have it!

PairO'Dice Lost
2010-03-19, 07:43 PM
Ironically, wotc did do the calculations a few years back. No one saw the memo? :smalleek:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ask/20061110a

They make the usual mistake of purely looking at the gold composition of the gold piece, which ignores the fact that D&D is on a gold standard and real life is on a fiat standard. Gold as a commodity should be measured that way, not gold as a currency. They have good reasoning for the prices, but they're still off the mark.

Matthew
2010-03-19, 07:51 PM
My rule of thumb is that 1gp is about $20. This makes a silver about $2, and a copper about $.20. I use this rule of thumb when pricing things, and it works pretty well.

That is pretty reasonable, I would say. It should be noted as well that D&D has two economies, one for adventurers and another for everybody else. It makes a little less than no sense on the whole

Rappy
2010-03-19, 07:53 PM
Ironically, wotc did do the calculations a few years back. No one saw the memo? :smalleek:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ask/20061110a
Odd. So they decided that the 1 GP = $20 estimate was wrong in between the printing of Urban Arcana and that article, apparently.

randomhero00
2010-03-19, 08:13 PM
To figure it out we need to find the value of something that would be equivalent for both universes.
gold- no, as has been pointed out, totally different economies

food- no, we mass grow/produce our food, they didn't

items- no, same as above really, rare items would be worse, since there'd be different intrinsic values from the universes

lumber or iron- no, we both have about equal use for them, problem is we mass farm both with efficient machines and such

etc...

Seeing the pattern here? So we need to find an alternate way to compare the two universes. One way might be comparing the purchasing power of a slice of the population.

For instance, we have statistics we know about our own world, something like 80% of the poorest people of the world live on 10$ or less a day/~70$ a week (IIRC.) In other words, that's generally the minimum amount of purchasing power you need to stay alive.

We know that in both universes you can technically live on 0$ (if you're slowly dying, growing your own food, etc.) So to find an intersect, we need to know what the majority of peasants/impoverished people make at minimum (according to this thread 3gp a week) in DnD.

So if 3gp a week is the minimum for impoverished peasants in DnD, then 3gp=70$ or about 1g=23$. Which comes pretty close to comparing services (like someone mentioned above, nice food, nice hotel, etc.)

edit: so to the OP, if you found a DnD gp it wouldn't be a big deal (like finding a 20dollar bill) because you're already filthy rich compared to a DnD peasant. And even tho a peasant may make 3gp a week, much of that is probably tied up in his work and living expenses (just as our impoverished aren't saving 10$ a day, they're spending it to survive).

The actual profit they make a month is probably in the silver pieces (or even in the copper range). Which means for them getting 1gp without having to work for it, is like months of profit, maybe even a years profit. But remember, we're talking the poorest of the poor. If you wanted to compare to someone more like you, then you'd need to figure what a DnD laborer equivalent is to your standard of living (i.e. not something anyone can answer unless you want to tell us about your finances.)

randomhero00
2010-03-19, 08:15 PM
Odd. So they decided that the 1 GP = $20 estimate was wrong in between the printing of Urban Arcana and that article, apparently.

they're answering the question in regards to the exchange rate, like what our gold costs. It doesn't really answer anything, as it has already been said, we value gold differently.

Ormur
2010-03-19, 09:31 PM
Whatever the exchange rate gold is really undervalued in D&D. In all of those calculations commoners are still likely to count their wealth in gold pieces, quite many of them even. There is obviously a lot more gold in the D&D world than in ours which ruins it's value a bit, especially as a currency. In both games I've played and ran we had to bring in banks handing out 1000gp notes to make sense of the amounts we were transferring. On the other hand them being purely subsistence farmers scraping out a meagre living doesn't fit the profession checks given. Perhaps we just misrepresent things, the commoners in D&D are actually a comfortably of middle class in a society that just looks medieval due to magic. Adventurers presumably being the likes of modern hedge fun managers and CEO's that make thousands of times more money than the average but still well of people.

Lysander
2010-03-19, 10:29 PM
Ironically, wotc did do the calculations a few years back. No one saw the memo? :smalleek:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ask/20061110a

All that teaches us is that whoever wrote that has no understanding of economics whatsoever.

The price of real world gold is completely irrelevant. Everybody, please stop mentioning how much an ounce is selling for today! That has no bearing on this whatsoever. The real value of gold has fluctuated throughout history.

According to one random website I can't vouch for that I randomly found when googling "value of gold in the middle ages", the inflation adjusted price of gold in the middle ages was $3000 an ounce, compared to just over 1,000 today according to reuters. Gold is worth different amounts depending on A) how much gold there is and B) how many people want it.

Tinydwarfman
2010-03-19, 10:33 PM
Truthfully, I'd blame that more on the "It is a flat 300gp for masterwork" moreso than the rule of thumb (which predates 3e by a number of years; in fact, when I came up with it, 1sp was a dollar and 1cp was $.10). If you translate it to percentages, instead of flat GP, it becomes that a masterwork long sword is 60gp, or about $1200.

And you're looking at the price of a +5 sword slightly wrong. It is not "It will make you 25% more accurate"... it is "It will make a man of average strength and no training fight as well as a warrior of many years of experience, or strike as hard as the strongest half-orc." While, mathematically, it's only 25%, it's also something that will effectively boost your strength 10 points when attacking.

My point still stands. A sword that doubles your strength when you are attacking with it is not worth a million bucks.

LibraryOgre
2010-03-20, 12:03 AM
My point still stands. A sword that doubles your strength when you are attacking with it is not worth a million bucks.

Really the quickest possible answer to this. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0122.html)

Different version: How much is it worth to you to be SOTA? Now, if you're content to be hunting down bands of brigands for the rest of your life, you probably don't need more than a masterwork sword, maybe of some special metal*. It's durable, and as your skill increases, you're not going to need much in the way of magical oomph... there's only so high an AC a bandit can squeeze out of leather armor and chain shirts. Likewise, you're not going to need a ton of armor... masterwork or +1 will do you because, while they can hit that pretty easily, you've got the HP to mow through their 2-4 HD selves pretty easily.

Now, if you want to move up in the game... say, start taking out owlbears or dragons, you need better gear. Generally, the rewards are commensurate, but taking on a full-grown dragon with a smile and a masterwork longsword just doesn't cut it. You need weapons that will hit more often, and hit harder. Every bit of edge you can eke out is important. So investing a million in a single sword... when your potential payoff is in the tens of millions range (once you've accounted for magic items, body parts, gold and jewels)? It becomes a lot more worth it to buy that +5 sword.

Different example: Think of magic items like players on your football team. Sure, you can hire Bubba right out of college. He played some high school ball, and still is pretty in shape. He'll run you about 15gp a season, and has a Play: Football skill of 4. Or, you can hire Studs McWonderback, who's lived and breathed football since he was an embryo. He's already got several trophies and titles, and a proven record. He'll run you a few million a season... but as a 6th level Jock, he's got a Play Football skill of.... 9. If you're running a bush league team, or want to hire a ringer for the church league, you might go with Bubba. If you're running a sport franchise worth tens of millions... then maybe one or two to Studs McWonderback isn't a bad idea.

Yet another example: You've got a rival who is your equal in every way. Next time you fight, he WILL do his best to kill you, and there's a 50/50 shot he'll do it, too. If you've got the money, is it worth it to you to add another 5%? What about 25%? Is 75/25 worth a few million to you? Or do you feel lucky?

These are the realities of an adventurer's life. These are things that the average schmuck on the street doesn't have to deal with. Josh the Carpenter? He may invest in a few weapons that he keeps around for home defense... a crossbow, a spear, maybe a hammer that's a bit tougher than is required for carpentry. Bartleby the Scrivener probably has a dagger or two that's a bit sharper than it needs to be to open letters. But if someone who can afford magic weapons and armor comes into their lives... they're already buggered, and that +5% isn't going to do much. They might invest in some work-related bits, if they can justify the expenses over the long run (if I spend 50gp on a tool that increases my check by +2, is it worth it? It pays for itself in a year... can I afford it until it pays for itself?), but tossing tons of money after a tool unrelated to their profession? Do YOU own a complete set of mechanic's tools, including a car lift, "just in case"?

Simply put: Adventurers don't spend money like normal people. They have a different set of priorities, because they have different needs. While a few million to buy a really nice sword is a huge cost, it's one that experts and adepts don't really think about, any more than you think about the cost to buy a Leer Jet or a Pacific Island... you may look it up out of curiosity, but you're not likely to be seriously considering the purchase.

*And don't get me started on how messed up the special materials costs are. The materials cost of an adamantine dagger is the same as for an adamantine greatsword.

Serpentine
2010-03-20, 01:05 AM
From a historical viewpoint, equivalent money value is generally based on subsistence items - usually bread. So, based on this, assuming a loaf of bread costs, say, $3US, and in D&D (3.5, SRD) it costs 2copper pieces, a gold piece would be approximately... It's been too long since I studies maths, and I really shouldn't have to ask my housemate about this...

Clackalations:
2/100ths x 1gp = $3.00
2/100 = 300
2 = 3000.00
1gp = $1500US.

Ozymandias9
2010-03-20, 08:48 AM
Actually, a loaf of bread is closer to $.90 for most of the US if you buy a generic brand (a better subsistence measure).

That would mean that:
.02 GP=$.9
2GP=$90
1GP=$45

But using a single price for index is only a good idea if larger indexing is off the table. I could have sworn that the rules gave some value of supporting a commoner for a day, which is essentially a total subsistence index. Then compare that to the US poverty line (~$41/day for a single adult last I looked). Again, I have to run off, so no time to actually look.

P.S., if the D&D number is for a family of 4, then $84. If 2, then $56.

Edit: My prior post should have said discretionary income, not disposable income. Sorry.

LibraryOgre
2010-03-20, 08:59 AM
From a historical viewpoint, equivalent money value is generally based on subsistence items - usually bread. So, based on this, assuming a loaf of bread costs, say, $3US, and in D&D (3.5, SRD) it costs 2copper pieces, a gold piece would be approximately... It's been too long since I studies maths, and I really shouldn't have to ask my housemate about this...

Clackalations:
2/100ths x 1gp = $3.00
2/100 = 300
2 = 3000.00
1gp = $1500US.

Ok, so I bought bread and PB&J yesterday. The bread, which is the cheapest Wal-Mart offered, was about $.90. If I want to spend $3 for a loaf of bread, I've got to go with some higher-end options.

That said, I remember, years ago (hint for age: I was, at that point, reading the Wizards of the Coast message boards in a newsreader. We were debating either if 3e would come out, or what it would be like), someone mentioned a "beer standard" for economics... that, over time, the average working man has made enough to buy X beers over the course of the years. Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate this X, despite looking every so often for the past few years.

Emmerask
2010-03-20, 09:32 AM
Actually, a loaf of bread is closer to $.90 for most of the US if you buy a generic brand (a better subsistence measure).

That would mean that:
.02 GP=$.9
2GP=$90
1GP=$45

But using a single price for index is only a good idea if larger indexing is off the table. I could have sworn that the rules gave some value of supporting a commoner for a day, which is essentially a total subsistence index. Then compare that to the US poverty line (~$41/day for a single adult last I looked). Again, I have to run off, so no time to actually look.

P.S., if the D&D number is for a family of 4, then $84. If 2, then $56.

Edit: My prior post should have said discretionary income, not disposable income. Sorry.

my little search found out quite different prices for bread in the us

U.S.A. (2008):
About $2.30 average for a loaf of standard, supermarket sliced bread
About $4.00 ($3.50 – $4.50) a loaf for whole-wheat or oat breads.

and you have to keep in mind that mass produced products are always way cheaper :smallwink:

Trouvere
2010-03-20, 10:33 AM
an iron flask costs 170,000gp ($24,650,000 -- greater than the gross domestic product of Sri Lanka)!$24.65m? WotC's only out 3500-fold or so on that one, so I think we should trust everything they say!

LibraryOgre
2010-03-20, 10:37 AM
my little search found out quite different prices for bread in the us

U.S.A. (2008):
About $2.30 average for a loaf of standard, supermarket sliced bread
About $4.00 ($3.50 – $4.50) a loaf for whole-wheat or oat breads.

and you have to keep in mind that mass produced products are always way cheaper :smallwink:

Depends on what and where you're looking. (http://data.bls.gov:8080/PDQ/outside.jsp?survey=ap)

Ironic thing about the above? Because I'm a librarian, I get to mark this on the statistics as a reference question. :smallbiggrin:

Matthew
2010-03-20, 10:46 AM
It's been too long since I studies maths, and I really shouldn't have to ask my housemate about this...

Clackalations:
1) 2/100ths x 1gp = $3.00
2) 2/100 = 300
3) 2 = 3000.00
4) 1gp = $1500US.

You need to tell your house mate not to give math advice. :smallbiggrin:

2 CP = 0.2 SP = 0.02 GP = $3.00

So far, so good, but then you converted $3.00 to 300 cents, and made a mistake at stage 3:

2) 2/100 = 300
3) 2 = 30,000 = $300.00
4) 1 GP = $150 US

How much does a loaf of bread weigh in the US? In the UK it is 800 grams, usually.

Ormur
2010-03-21, 12:43 AM
an iron flask costs 170,000gp ($24,650,000 -- greater than the gross domestic product of Sri Lanka)!

Uh no, the GDP of Sri Lanka is 41 billion dollars, 96 if you use PPP. Did they forget three or four zeroes or were they using GDP per capita?

The only country I could find with a GDP less then the cost of an Iron flask converted to dollars on that rate is the very poor island country of Tuvalu with a population of less than thirteen thousand.

Serpentine
2010-03-21, 01:39 AM
You need to tell your house mate not to give math advice. :smallbiggrin:

2 CP = 0.2 SP = 0.02 GP = $3.00

So far, so good, but then you converted $3.00 to 300 cents, and made a mistake at stage 3:

2) 2/100 = 300
3) 2 = 30,000 = $300.00
4) 1 GP = $150 US

How much does a loaf of bread weigh in the US? In the UK it is 800 grams, usually.Ah. No, I didn't ask housemate (maths major, honours in astrophysics, teaching degree, currently doing... honours/Masters/PhD in, I think Pure Mathematics); that's where I went wrong. I originally forgot to convert it back to dollars rather than cents, and game out with $150,000 :smalltongue: So yeah, that looks much better.
On the price of bread: That was just a guess, meant to demonstrate the theory rather than get an actual approximation.
I have no doubt that historians use other basic products to get an idea of relative value (milk or eggs or whatever, perhaps), but I was explicitly told that bread was the main base.

Mark: Hrm. I should do that... Except I always forget the statistics thing even while I'm at work :smallsigh: I've been working there for about 3 or 4 years, and I think I've marked something down maybe once.