How much is a gold piece worth? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Gwazi Magnum

2013-06-18, 10:59 PM

The comparison I've always seen is that a gold piece is worth the price of one goat. So...roughly one hundred dollars American, perhaps? Your mileage may vary, but so would the rough economy of the area you're adventuring in.

^This pretty much makes sense and what I would agree with.

However, it's worth noting that a SP is meant to be a persons wage for the day not including food and clothing (which is self made-grown, not bought). So by this logic a normal person makes around 20 dollars a day assuming they work 5 days a week.

Which although barbaric for our culture is pretty accurate in less developed countries where people struggle to get by, which d&d citizens are constantly considered as being.

Also, in medieval times people were also very poor and struggling greatly to survive and support themselves. So, not only is a level 1 hero very wealthy normally starting with around 10,000 dollars, but the typical person is very poor.

i like to use a loaf of bread/carb-loaded food(such as a stack of tortillas, a couple pieces of pita, or a bowl of rice) as the basic measurement of wealth. i suggest going through it this way, as this (while sometimes varying depending on the current economy) is generally the amount one person needs to feed themselves for one day.

in DnD, a loaf of bread costs 2 CP. so you could buy 50 loaves of bread for 1 GP. in the USA, a loaf of bread is (as a high estimate) 4 dollars. so 50 loaves cost 200 dollars, and thus, 1 GP=200 dollars. however, this depends a bit on what type of bread you are buying. it could be as low as 2 dollars per loaf, or 100 dollars per GP.

however, this depends on so many factors, not the least of which is the economic class of those purchasing the goods, that it's really only good for a rough estimate, not a direct conversion.

Given how poor d&d citizens are meant to be, I would assume they are buying the really cheap and stale bread assuming they're buying it at all rather than growing it themselves.

Spuddles

2013-06-18, 11:01 PM

The real question is- what's a big mac cost in gp? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index)

Kelb_Panthera

2013-06-18, 11:01 PM

i like to use a loaf of bread/carb-loaded food(such as a stack of tortillas, a couple pieces of pita, or a bowl of rice) as the basic measurement of wealth. i suggest going through it this way, as this (while sometimes varying depending on the current economy) is generally the amount one person needs to feed themselves for one day.

in DnD, a loaf of bread costs 2 CP. so you could buy 50 loaves of bread for 1 GP. in the USA, a loaf of bread is (as a high estimate) 4 dollars. so 50 loaves cost 200 dollars, and thus, 1 GP=200 dollars. however, this depends a bit on what type of bread you are buying. it could be as low as 2 dollars per loaf, or 100 dollars per GP.

however, this depends on so many factors, not the least of which is the economic class of those purchasing the goods, that it's really only good for a rough estimate, not a direct conversion.

This is probably a good mode of comparison.

But I gotta ask, where on earth do you shop that you shell out four bucks for a loaf of bread?

Here in southern alabama at the winn-dixie you can get a loaf of a premium brand for about $2.50 Store brand at the food depot is under a dollar.

What kind of bread are you eating?

nightwyrm

2013-06-18, 11:02 PM

Well, 1 gp also gets you 50' of hemp rope which can go for about $50 irl....so D&D world has expensive rope? :smallconfused:

Spuddles

2013-06-18, 11:04 PM

Well, 1 gp also gets you 50' of hemp rope which can go for about $50 irl....so D&D world has expensive rope? :smallconfused:

Try making hemp rope or a needle on your own, without the benefits of the industrial revolution.

Reddish Mage

2013-06-18, 11:19 PM

My thoughts as well...
perhaps it would make more sense to try converting between real-life medieval currency with D&D gold pieces? I don't really know enough about that to get a good estimate, though.

Wow! I'm amazed the immediate reaction is was all in the low hundreds and that the calculated are based on the charts of basic good prices. The reactions I've had from previous gaming groups to this question have been literally "$1-10" and pulled from nowhere.

I actually have performed fairly sophisticated analysis using a medieval price list, consumer price data going back to the 12th century in England, and the standard of living for low-wage workers from the 12th-20th century (it actually goes up and down but is mostly flat according to the statistical analysis). Starting from the challengeable assumption that the wage of a low wage worker was about the same and decent basis, I assumed that roughly $50 USD was the same a 1 silver piece and 1 penny in the 12th century (a bit more then a days wage for a laborer). I then saw how well the pricing worked on a contemporary/medieval/D&D price list and the resulting salaries for various professionals in the 12th and 20th Century as well is in D&D land.

The results were all the right scale! That is the price of medieval food stuff worked well, and the armor was given the prices other books said medieval armor cost. Similarly, D&D armor also in ballpark in the right area (Plate armor should cost several 100,000 to 1M, medium armor should still be pretty damn expensive with the crusader mail costing nearly 100k). Furniture and weapons work out well in 20th Century/Medieval England/D&D terms if you allow that prices are all for hand-crafted solid quality work.

I've only found this other analysis http://www.d20source.com/2008/04/how-much-is-a-gold-piece-worth Who comes to roughly the same conclusion.

I asked the question because I expected the less than $100 figure to be common I was wondering how a $500+ analysis would be received.

I also think the OOTS buys into the myth that the GP has a very low value, which I believe is meant to normalize the extreme wealth even low level adventurers carry according to the Wealth-by-level guidelines.

Doug Lampert

2013-06-18, 11:25 PM

^This pretty much makes sense and what I would agree with.

However, it's worth noting that a SP is meant to be a persons wage for the day not including food and clothing (which is self made-grown, not bought). So by this logic a normal person makes around 20 dollars a day assuming they work 5 days a week.

No! One SP per day is stated to be the cost of unskilled labor. With no definition as to what unskilled means or how many people earn that. Strangely, in the real world, most people have some skill in what they do for a living.

But, even without that, if you hire on for a week at a time rather than day labor, you can get hired to do craft work at rates given in the skill, and craft is usable untrained. Someone with 3 Int and NO SKILLS can still get 4 GP a week by taking 10, it only goes up from there.

So who gets 1 SP/day? I figure that's hiring someone's grandmother or the next door neighbor's kid to babysit or help on the lawn. There's no reason for a settled adult to get that given that craft is usable untrained and pays better.

Ignoring that: A "typical" commoner will have a 12 in one ability and a 13 in another (NPC array), which makes it more likely than not that he has a +1 in either Int or Wis even before he hits middle age (which can give him a 14 easily enough).

This lets him get a +10 check bonus in either profession or craft at level 1 and with no racial bonus (masterwork tools, +1 ability, +4 ranks, +3 feat). That earns 10 GP a week for work for hire, and more than that to a craftsman who owns a shop. (9 GP a week without the masterwork tools.)

9-10 GP a week should be considered a fairly common standard of living in D&D land unless your world is inhabited by commoners who DON'T bother to be good at what they do for a living. This gives annual incomes of 520 or so GP, which accords well with the price of things like houses. So earning wise a GP is worth about $80 for hiring if you assume the average worker gets $40,000 or more (this depends on where you live). Given that goods go closer to $100-$200 per GP this implies that the standard of living in D&D land is only slightly lower than in the modern USA, which is fine given magic and fits with someplace like Ebberon, but by the rules should be true anywhere.

Additionally: If you actually do the math based on the DMG it turns out that D&D land is almost certainly more urbanized than the modern USA, only 1% of settlements are big, but that doesn't mean only 1% of people live in big settlements, since big settlements are bigger than small ones and have more people per settlement. A highly urbanized populace also fits with a high standard of living.

Maginomicon

2013-06-18, 11:30 PM

WotC has an official answer to this question. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ask/20061110a)

Spuddles

2013-06-18, 11:34 PM

No! One SP per day is stated to be the cost of unskilled labor. With no definition as to what unskilled means or how many people earn that. Strangely, in the real world, most people have some skill in what they do for a living.

But, even without that, if you hire on for a week at a time rather than day labor, you can get hired to do craft work at rates given in the skill, and craft is usable untrained. Someone with 3 Int and NO SKILLS can still get 4 GP a week by taking 10, it only goes up from there.

So who gets 1 SP/day? I figure that's hiring someone's grandmother or the next door neighbor's kid to babysit or help on the lawn. There's no reason for a settled adult to get that given that craft is usable untrained and pays better.

Ignoring that: A "typical" commoner will have a 12 in one ability and a 13 in another (NPC array), which makes it more likely than not that he has a +1 in either Int or Wis even before he hits middle age (which can give him a 14 easily enough).

This lets him get a +10 check bonus in either profession or craft at level 1 and with no racial bonus (masterwork tools, +1 ability, +4 ranks, +3 feat). That earns 10 GP a week for work for hire, and more than that to a craftsman who owns a shop. (9 GP a week without the masterwork tools.)

9-10 GP a week should be considered a fairly common standard of living in D&D land unless your world is inhabited by commoners who DON'T bother to be good at what they do for a living. This gives annual incomes of 520 or so GP, which accords well with the price of things like houses. So earning wise a GP is worth about $80 for hiring if you assume the average worker gets $40,000 or more (this depends on where you live). Given that goods go closer to $100-$200 per GP this implies that the standard of living in D&D land is only slightly lower than in the modern USA, which is fine given magic and fits with someplace like Ebberon, but by the rules should be true anywhere.

Additionally: If you actually do the math based on the DMG it turns out that D&D land is almost certainly more urbanized than the modern USA, only 1% of settlements are big, but that doesn't mean only 1% of people live in big settlements, since big settlements are bigger than small ones and have more people per settlement. A highly urbanized populace also fits with a high standard of living.

"Skilled labor" is actually a thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skilled_worker

If you work fast food, you're unskilled labor. If you wait tables, you're unskilled. Chances are, if you're in the service industry, you're unskilled labor.

I would suspect that most unskilled D&D labor is in the 12 to 26 year old bracket.

Also note that craft requires a considerable amount of capital on hand. That in and of itself is an investment, and carriers a fairly high level of risk, considering levels of law, marauding ogres, etc.

SowZ

2013-06-18, 11:36 PM

Let's look at it from a perspective of money as a stand in for labor and production. Comparing it to goods seems wrong to me, since we will have more goods due to mass production and factories. (They don't take as much advantage of magic as they should in D&D for some reason.) So let's look at wealth as relative. Middle, low, and upper class should be easy.

The average person works about 5 days a week or 260 days a year. Vacation and days off maybe 250. About 50,000 a year USD is solidly middle class for the USA. That means a person doing well, (but not rich,) for themselves makes about 200 dollars in a work day.

In D&D, a professional middle-class worker probably has 4 ranks in craft or profession, a MW tool, and likely skill focus. It is also likely they have +1 in either wisdom or Int. Or at least they will by the time they hit middle aged. That's 10 gold a week. Assuming a 5 day work week, that's 2 gold per work day. Or about a hundred dollars a day.

If you want to know what goods can buy to compare value of modern items to D&D items, my illustration doesn't help you. If you want to know how people would view gold incomes or how much they would value a gold coin, this should help you.

To most NPCs, a gold coin represents as much of their income/labor as a 100 dollar bill does to any of us.

A wealthy person, (someone worth half a million or more,) would be worth 5,000+ gold coins. Most of this is likely tied up in property, items, and investments.

EDIT: Swordsaged

Spuddles

2013-06-18, 11:41 PM

Tvtyrant

2013-06-18, 11:42 PM

Cross reference a bunch of different items if you want a more accurate conversion. I know wheat, iron, oil, copper, mercury, beef and land are all popular as sources for currency references.

Basically take fixed and consumable products. For instance 50 GP=1 pound of gold, or roughly $25,000 american dollars (so a GP is $500.) 2 copper pieces (or .02 gold pieces) are worth 1 pound of flour, while costco flour is 24 cents a pound. This equates a GP with $12. I found a place that sells 1.5 pound iron ingots for $47, so $47= 1.5 SP or .15 GP. A GP is thus $313.

I suck at math, but the average is so far $275=1 GP. If you went through every item you could get a better conversion, but obviously gold is a lot scarcer in our time relative to bread and iron :P

CRtwenty

2013-06-18, 11:46 PM

A GP is worth about $100?
Dang, I need to go back to that Inn and get some change for the GP I spent on that meal. Stupid NPCs and their over inflated prices for Adventurers. You just know as soon as the party leaves town the prices go down significantly.

Maginomicon

2013-06-18, 11:50 PM

Reddish Mage

2013-06-18, 11:54 PM

No! One SP per day is stated to be the cost of unskilled labor. With no definition as to what unskilled means or how many people earn that. Strangely, in the real world, most people have some skill in what they do for a living.

But, even without that, if you hire on for a week at a time rather than day labor, you can get hired to do craft work at rates given in the skill, and craft is usable untrained. Someone with 3 Int and NO SKILLS can still get 4 GP a week by taking 10, it only goes up from there.

So who gets 1 SP/day? I figure that's hiring someone's grandmother or the next door neighbor's kid to babysit or help on the lawn. There's no reason for a settled adult to get that given that craft is usable untrained and pays better.

Ignoring that: A "typical" commoner will have a 12 in one ability and a 13 in another (NPC array), which makes it more likely than not that he has a +1 in either Int or Wis even before he hits middle age (which can give him a 14 easily enough).

This lets him get a +10 check bonus in either profession or craft at level 1 and with no racial bonus (masterwork tools, +1 ability, +4 ranks, +3 feat). That earns 10 GP a week for work for hire, and more than that to a craftsman who owns a shop. (9 GP a week without the masterwork tools.)

9-10 GP a week should be considered a fairly common standard of living in D&D land unless your world is inhabited by commoners who DON'T bother to be good at what they do for a living. This gives annual incomes of 520 or so GP, which accords well with the price of things like houses. So earning wise a GP is worth about $80 for hiring if you assume the average worker gets $40,000 or more (this depends on where you live). Given that goods go closer to $100-$200 per GP this implies that the standard of living in D&D land is only slightly lower than in the modern USA, which is fine given magic and fits with someplace like Ebberon, but by the rules should be true anywhere.

Additionally: If you actually do the math based on the DMG it turns out that D&D land is almost certainly more urbanized than the modern USA, only 1% of settlements are big, but that doesn't mean only 1% of people live in big settlements, since big settlements are bigger than small ones and have more people per settlement. A highly urbanized populace also fits with a high standard of living.

$40,000 is a middle-class wage in America. In both settings there has got to be a lot of people below that. A minimum wage worker in the US makes 15k a year. The Services table in the SRD is quite clear, 1sp is not paying the teenager next door to baby-sit for a few hours, its for a "typical daily wage" for "laborers, porters, cooks, maids, and other menial workers." A trained hireling can be had for 3sp and those include "mercenary warriors, masons, craftsmen, scribes, teamsters, and other trained hirelings," though this does represent a "minimum" I take the DMG to mean that you certainly find such trained hireling at that price or perhaps a sp or two higher in a decent-sized town without much trouble.

I understand that a 1st level commoner class with a commoner array can make a lot of money by making optimal use of a craft or profession skill if optimized. I reject that a typical commoner is so optimized, and that those with a skill necessarily make use of it using the rules you mentioned.

SowZ

2013-06-19, 12:05 AM

$40,000 is a middle-class wage in America. In both settings there has got to be a lot of people below that. A minimum wage worker in the US makes 15k a year. The Services table in the SRD is quite clear, 1sp is not paying the teenager next door to baby-sit for a few hours, its for a "typical daily wage" for "laborers, porters, cooks, maids, and other menial workers." A trained hireling can be had for 3sp and those include "mercenary warriors, masons, craftsmen, scribes, teamsters, and other trained hirelings," though this does represent a "minimum" I take the DMG to mean that you certainly find such trained hireling at that price or perhaps a sp or two higher in a decent-sized town without much trouble.

I understand that a 1st level commoner class with a commoner array can make a lot of money by making optimal use of a craft or profession skill if optimized. I reject that a typical commoner is so optimized, and that those with a skill necessarily make use of it using the rules you mentioned.

1sp is someone who is desperate, because they aren't trained in what they do. They will work at anything. But most people? Most people are trained in something or else will eventually get enough on the job training to be worth more.

3sp a day representing 15k a year works alright. I used 50k as someone solidly in the middle class, (average is actually 47k.) 15, (minimum wage,) is exactly 30 percent of 50k. 3sp is the minimum for someone who knows what they are doing. 3sp is only 15% of 2 gold, but I think 3sp isn't that common. Most people will eventually make at least double that just like most adults don't work minimum wage their whole life.

Double that, 6sp, is equivalent to about 14-15 bucks an hour which is pretty typical for people in decent jobs or jobs they've worked at for a while, but not with a good college degree.

TypoNinja

2013-06-19, 12:12 AM

No! One SP per day is stated to be the cost of unskilled labor. With no definition as to what unskilled means or how many people earn that. Strangely, in the real world, most people have some skill in what they do for a living.

But, even without that, if you hire on for a week at a time rather than day labor, you can get hired to do craft work at rates given in the skill, and craft is usable untrained. Someone with 3 Int and NO SKILLS can still get 4 GP a week by taking 10, it only goes up from there.

So who gets 1 SP/day? I figure that's hiring someone's grandmother or the next door neighbor's kid to babysit or help on the lawn. There's no reason for a settled adult to get that given that craft is usable untrained and pays better.

Ignoring that: A "typical" commoner will have a 12 in one ability and a 13 in another (NPC array), which makes it more likely than not that he has a +1 in either Int or Wis even before he hits middle age (which can give him a 14 easily enough).

This lets him get a +10 check bonus in either profession or craft at level 1 and with no racial bonus (masterwork tools, +1 ability, +4 ranks, +3 feat). That earns 10 GP a week for work for hire, and more than that to a craftsman who owns a shop. (9 GP a week without the masterwork tools.)

9-10 GP a week should be considered a fairly common standard of living in D&D land unless your world is inhabited by commoners who DON'T bother to be good at what they do for a living. This gives annual incomes of 520 or so GP, which accords well with the price of things like houses. So earning wise a GP is worth about $80 for hiring if you assume the average worker gets $40,000 or more (this depends on where you live). Given that goods go closer to $100-$200 per GP this implies that the standard of living in D&D land is only slightly lower than in the modern USA, which is fine given magic and fits with someplace like Ebberon, but by the rules should be true anywhere.

Additionally: If you actually do the math based on the DMG it turns out that D&D land is almost certainly more urbanized than the modern USA, only 1% of settlements are big, but that doesn't mean only 1% of people live in big settlements, since big settlements are bigger than small ones and have more people per settlement. A highly urbanized populace also fits with a high standard of living.

A feat? Abilities focused for crafting bonuses instead of Str and Con like a poor farm family might have, skill ranks in a profession, masterwork tools.

You've described a master craftsman, or at least at a journeyman, not a common laborer.

Unskilled labor is just that, work that doesn't require specific training, can you haul goods? Get down to the docks and unload ships all day! Manual labor my friend, back breaking, life destroying manual labor, for peanuts.

Skilled labor are people who make a skill check doing what you paid them too, craftsmen, perhaps a performer or entertainer. Even the coachman you hired has skill at driving the conveyance and handling animals. Guardsmen are trained fighters and observers, though you'll probably go for outright mercenaries as an adventurer since your day to day life is a lot more risky than checking wagons for smuggled goods at the city gates.

Peasants are heartbreakingly broke by the standards of adventurers, if you gave 200 GP to a home for orphans they literally wouldn't know what to do with it. They'd name the place after you, and then try to figure out how the hell they could spend gold. They could buy 10,000lbs of flour with that, A chicken is 2cp, for a gold, they'd have 50 chickens and the ability to start their own farm.

A whole damn cow is only 2GP, and a handful could provide milk for years before being turned into stupendous quantities of meat.

Spuddles

2013-06-19, 12:14 AM

SowZ

2013-06-19, 12:24 AM

A feat? Abilities focused for crafting bonuses instead of Str and Con like a poor farm family might have, skill ranks in a profession, masterwork tools.

You've described a master craftsman, or at least at a journeyman, not a common laborer.

Unskilled labor is just that, work that doesn't require specific training, can you haul goods? Get down to the docks and unload ships all day! Manual labor my friend, back breaking, life destroying manual labor, for peanuts.

Skilled labor are people who make a skill check doing what you paid them too, craftsmen, perhaps a performer or entertainer. Even the coachman you hired has skill at driving the conveyance and handling animals. Guardsmen are trained fighters and observers, though you'll probably go for outright mercenaries as an adventurer since your day to day life is a lot more risky than checking wagons for smuggled goods at the city gates.

Peasants are heartbreakingly broke by the standards of adventurers, if you gave 200 GP to a home for orphans they literally wouldn't know what to do with it. They'd name the place after you, and then try to figure out how the hell they could spend gold. They could buy 10,000lbs of flour with that, A chicken is 2cp, for a gold, they'd have 50 chickens and the ability to start their own farm.

A whole damn cow is only 2GP, and a handful could provide milk for years before being turned into stupendous quantities of meat.

Even an assistant or a farmer is making 3sp a day. That's enough to get food, lodging, and still have enough to buy a cow after two weeks. People just aren't that poor in the DMG D&D world. Most people are at least trained laborers. Just look at how many fields of work fall under profession, not to mention craft.

Spuddles

2013-06-19, 01:22 AM

Wow, I just did some economics. With math. Hot damn. I would really like someone to double check my math.

If unskilled labor is used to aid another, as it should, then follow the following:

The proportion of value generated from workers is =
(worker bonus to check)/(total check)

The value produced per day in gp is (total check)/7/2, or total check/14. In sp, that is 5 total check/7. Let's call this sp/day, or total value produced per day. In other words, if you roll a 21 on your profession check, you earn 15 sp a day (21 times 5/7).

The value in sp, per day, produced by workers is equal to the total value (sp/day) times the worker proportion.

Or
(worker bonus to check)/(total check) * sp/day

or

(worker bonus to check)/(total check) * 5(total check)/7

It might not look like it due to notation, but we have a total check in the numerator and denominator in that product, so we end with:

(worker bonus to check)5/7

This is the amount of value you unskilled workers are generating for you, in silver, per day.

Worker bonus to check = 2 * number of workers, where 2 is the bonus they are giving you.

So the individual value a worker produces each day 2*5/7, or 10/7ths a sp, or 1.4 sp a day

Kelb_Panthera

2013-06-19, 01:24 AM

Human commoner 2 (Da), 5 ranks in profession: dirt farmer, 14 wisdom
Human commoner 2 (Ma), 3 ranks in craft: this, craft: that, craft: and the other, int 14.

Girl1, girl 2, girl 3, girl 4, human commoner 1.

boy 1, boy2, boy3, boy 4, human commoner 1.

Ox.

3 master work craft tools
1 master work profession tool.

Da, taking 10, with help from his MW tool, ox, and 4 boys, gets a 29 on his checks. That's 145 silver per week, or just over 20 sp per day. That comes out to 4 sp per person.

Ma can make things around the house that are needed at 1/3rd the cost and sell what isn't needed. Mostly textiles.

Let's take a level 3 expert professional, give him skill focus, a MW tool, and 5 unskilled laborers that perform menial duties. Taking 10, that's 31 on a check, or 155 sp per week. If you pay each worker commiserate to what they added to the check (+2), they each get a little over 10sp per week, or just over 1sp a day.

Unskilled labor will mostly be the young. There are 20 million teenagers in the united states. In another time (one without labor laws or minimum wages), all those teenagers would be working. They wouldn't be particularly good at what they did, but many of them would be picking up crafts or trades.You realize that, if we assume a metropolis includes the surrounding farm-land necessary to feed its populace, that ma and pa represent 2 out of only about 32 second level commoners in the whole city of 25000+ people. All the second level commoners in city make up less than a 10th of 1% of the population. You've also got the farm sitting on 200gp worth of masterwork tools.
Then of course there's the fact that Pa is optimized to do nothing but work at proffession (farmer) which is too much of an abstraction. Profession is for things like gambler, dock-hand, waiter, etc; things with a -very- narrow skill set.

A farmer would need handle animal to get the ox to work; survival to estimate the weather for determining when to plant, when to harvest, when to put the livestock in because of an approaching storm, etc; a couple ranks in one or another craft skill for repairing a broken plow, scythe, or other tool; a few CC in knowledge nature so that he could tell when female livestock went into estrus and for birthing the livestock he breeds; and a rank or two in ride and/or profession (teamster) to reliably control his horse or cart if they spook when going into town with wares to sell. Nevermind the couple throwaway ranks in know (local) for all the gossip folks do when there's no such thing as TV or internet.

Unskilled labor includes any job that doesn't require formal schooling.

Even an assistant or a farmer is making 3sp a day. That's enough to get food, lodging, and still have enough to buy a cow after two weeks. People just aren't that poor in the DMG D&D world. Most people are at least trained laborers. Just look at how many fields of work fall under profession, not to mention craft.

What are you talking about? Lodging in a common room and eating food with meat enough to not die before you're thirty costs 8sp a day. Over 2gp a day if you want your own room and a literal pot to piss in.

Spuddles

2013-06-19, 01:32 AM

Kelb_Panthera

2013-06-19, 01:50 AM

No, but I will tell you that an apprenticeship -is- formal schooling.

The distinction between Profession (farmer) and profession (maid) is one of scope. The latter includes cleaning, making beds, and taking orders from your boss. The former covers that wide range of things I mentioned that are all covered explicitly by other skills.

Spuddles

2013-06-19, 02:08 AM

No, but I will tell you that an apprenticeship -is- formal schooling.

No it's not.
Formal schooling, as opposed to just schooling, is going to a formal school. Please either use words as they are used, or just admit you're wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education#Formal_education
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education#Non-formal_education

The distinction between Profession (farmer) and profession (maid) is one of scope. The latter includes cleaning, making beds, and taking orders from your boss. The former covers that wide range of things I mentioned that are all covered explicitly by other skills.

You are really into just making up your own definitions and then arguing away, huh?

From the SRD:
"Like Craft, Knowledge, and Perform, Profession is actually a number of separate skills. You could have several Profession skills, each with its own ranks, each purchased as a separate skill. While a Craft skill represents ability in creating or making an item, a Profession skill represents an aptitude in a vocation requiring a broader range of less specific knowledge."

"Check
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."

Supervise helpers- gee, that could be diplomacy, intimidate, bluff, sense motive... nope! It's a profession check!

Perform daily tasks- gee, that could be a ride check, a handle animal check, a craft check, a diplomacy check, a forgery check, a knowledge check- nope! It's a profession check!

Profession is meant to be a catch all. This is from the PFSRD, but you will find a very similar list in your PHB:

The most common Profession skills are architect, baker, barrister, brewer, butcher, clerk, cook, courtesan, driver, engineer, farmer, fisherman, gambler, gardener, herbalist, innkeeper, librarian, merchant, midwife, miller, miner, porter, sailor, scribe, shepherd, stable master, soldier, tanner, trapper, and woodcutter.

dspeyer

2013-06-19, 02:15 AM

I ran a bunch of numbers on this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=111169) a while back and concluded around $40 with a lot of variance based on what you looked at.

Spuddles

2013-06-19, 02:25 AM

In order for an untrained professional working on his own to make 1sp a day, he'd have to roll a profession check of 1.4.

0.7 gp a week, is 7 sp a week, is 1 sp a day.

Assuming the average unskilled laborer has a +0 (spends skill points to make up for wisdom deficit), and takes 10, they're earning 5x as much as the PHB says they should.

I have no idea where the PHB got that number, unless the untrained are employed by others.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-06-19, 03:46 AM

No it's not.
Formal schooling, as opposed to just schooling, is going to a formal school. Please either use words as they are used, or just admit you're wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education#Formal_education
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education#Non-formal_education
Yeah, there're two problems with this argument. First is that those are the modern, technical definitions. I was using the informal, common parlance definition; whereby formal schooling is any kind of formalized, systemic method of education as opposed to education learned in informal conversation with peers or learned persons outside of any system. Highlighting my misuse of a term that has a technical definition doesn't change what I meant, and what I suspect you knew I meant unless english isn't your native language. Second, that article breaks down education into -three- strata; formal, non-formal, and informal.

You are really into just making up your own definitions and then arguing away, huh?

From the SRD:
"Like Craft, Knowledge, and Perform, Profession is actually a number of separate skills. You could have several Profession skills, each with its own ranks, each purchased as a separate skill. While a Craft skill represents ability in creating or making an item, a Profession skill represents an aptitude in a vocation requiring a broader range of less specific knowledge."

"Check
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."

Supervise helpers- gee, that could be diplomacy, intimidate, bluff, sense motive... nope! It's a profession check!

Perform daily tasks- gee, that could be a ride check, a handle animal check, a craft check, a diplomacy check, a forgery check, a knowledge check- nope! It's a profession check!

Profession is meant to be a catch all. This is from the PFSRD, but you will find a very similar list in your PHB:

The most common Profession skills are architect, baker, barrister, brewer, butcher, clerk, cook, courtesan, driver, engineer, farmer, fisherman, gambler, gardener, herbalist, innkeeper, librarian, merchant, midwife, miller, miner, porter, sailor, scribe, shepherd, stable master, soldier, tanner, trapper, and woodcutter.

One of these things is not like the others. Even so, there's also the matter that while a certain degree of attention was paid toward keeping the system consistent, it was certainly never considered that someone might actually put this level of scrutiny on how a subsistence farmer in a pseudo-medieval setting would actually go about his job. It's dungeons and dragons, not kumquats and varmits.

I'll cede that it's RAW, but I insist that it's an oversight that shouldn't be.

edit: And 14sp a week is 2sp per day.

TuggyNE

2013-06-19, 04:15 AM

One of these things is not like the others.

Only one of them? Profession: Driver is just a Handle Animal check, possibly with a smidge of Survival to keep on track and avoid deep mud or whatever. Profession: Shepherd is the same, with occasional attack rolls with your preferred weapon against wolves or bears or what-have-you. Profession: Trapper is mostly Survival with some Hide and Move Silently. Profession: Stable Master is yet more Handle Animal with a dose of Diplomacy or something for negotiating prices, and Appraise to make sure you don't make bad trades.

You could probably do the same thing for most of those entries, honestly; although a lot of them are only loosely covered by existing skills, few are simply absent entirely.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-06-19, 04:22 AM

Only one of them? Profession: Driver is just a Handle Animal check, possibly with a smidge of Survival to keep on track and avoid deep mud or whatever. Profession: Shepherd is the same, with occasional attack rolls with your preferred weapon against wolves or bears or what-have-you. Profession: Trapper is mostly Survival with some Hide and Move Silently. Profession: Stable Master is yet more Handle Animal with a dose of Diplomacy or something for negotiating prices, and Appraise to make sure you don't make bad trades.

You could probably do the same thing for most of those entries, honestly; although a lot of them are only loosely covered by existing skills, few are simply absent entirely.

My point was that all of those cover a much narrower band of skills than farmer.

Incidently, proffession (driver) actually is the appropriate skill for driving a cart according to A&EG.

ahenobarbi

2013-06-19, 04:30 AM

The question is flawed. In the same way question "how much nowadays $ a full-plate did cost when people still used them". Sure you can give some number based on gold prices. Bu if you estimate based on saffron, salt, pepper, iron, wheat, labor and hamburger prices you'll get (wildly different) prices. And for each you could argue that this particular one makes most sense. It's a bit similar to "how much would Air Conditioner cost in ancient Rome" but less obvious.

Shadow of the Sun

2013-06-19, 04:43 AM

Well, in the real world, gold's value is generally reasonably stable, because the amount of resources; whenever there's a gold rush, the price of gold drops because of the increased availability.

Gold is convenient as a means of representing money because, well, it's rare, and because it doesn't degrade over time. At least in the real world.

In DnD, gold might have mystical properties that makes it more valuable, which might burn it up or something. Kind of like barrels of oil, maybe?

In the end, the only answer I can give is "What the DM decides". Not helpful, I know.

TypoNinja

2013-06-19, 05:15 AM

No it's not.

Apprenticeships are formal schooling, we just call them trade schools now and the student teacher ratio sucks a lot more.

Its directed education with an emphasis on a specific skill set, just because it doesn't happen in an accredited college doesn't make it any less of an education.

Spuddles

2013-06-19, 06:08 AM

Apprenticeships are formal schooling, we just call them trade schools now and the student teacher ratio sucks a lot more.

Its directed education with an emphasis on a specific skill set, just because it doesn't happen in an accredited college doesn't make it any less of an education.

Wow, no one is insulting your apprenticeship, but it still isn't considered formal education. "Formal education" is a specific phrase, and has been one for a very long time, and has referred to the same thing for even longer.

Oh hey look, that page I linked to but you didn't bother reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education#Formal_education_in_the_Middl e_Ages_.28500-1600_AD.29

Anyway, can you guys stop derailing the thread with your semantic difficulties?

Jack_Simth

2013-06-19, 07:39 AM

If you could put a gold piece into a $ amount how much would it be worth?

What would be a typical middle class annual salary? How much gold would be considered "rich."

You will have a hard time getting an answer to the first question. The prices of goods we're familiar with in real life do not have a consistent conversion factor to get D&D prices of the same goods. Oh yes, and modern prices of essentially the same thing vary between IRL stores and manufacturers (some of this is due to quality differences, some of this is due to advertising differences).

However, being 'rich' is relatively easy to measure: Rich people have other people working for them for no other reason that the luxury of it. A Rich person owns a nice home, has someone clean it for them, and eats nice food. I don't recall the costs of a nice home in D&D, but a trained hireling (Cook/maid?) + an untrained hirling (butler) would be 4 sp/day, plus their upkeep (yes, you have to feed and shelter them). If they have a room in your own house, and make Craft checks for the food, you can get by at 1/3rd food costs. 3 sp (*2, /3)= 2 sp/day for keeping the two of them up with "common" food, and 5 sp/day (* the number of people in your family, /3) for your own meals. So if you've got, say, yourself, your wife, and three children, a butler, and a cook/maid, you're burning (5*5/3)+4+2=14.333333333 sp/day, or 5231.666666667 sp/year (=523.16... gp/year). You'll be occasionally buying other things (clothing, jewlery, horses, feed for horses, et cetera), so let's round that up to an even 600 gp/year income to be considered 'rich', plus owning a good home with enough rooms to house your servants as well. You'll need more if there are taxes to worry about.

Reddish Mage

2013-06-19, 08:59 AM

The question is flawed. In the same way question "how much nowadays $ a full-plate did cost when people still used them".

Woa, its one thing to say you can't do this for D&D because it the list was made up whimsically (it actually doesn't look that way). However, Historians actually can and do put historical prices medieval goods and services. In particular, you can find prices for things like full plate (depends on the exact armor you are calling full plate and the quality but ranges from in the 100ks to well above $1M). There are, of course, several methodologies each yielding different prices, but they tend to agree in scale.

Anyway you can find the books, the prices and the methodologies yourself if you have the time. Here is an eclectic list of prices, and a list of sources they were taken from. The wages of an unskilled laborer was historically a bit less then a penny a day.

http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medprice.htm

The actual price of gold worked better for RL medieval to contemporary before it went wild during the great recession (It got you a high quality fully tailored suit of mens clothing in medieval times, it could get you a the same today). I don't think it's the best way to calculate D&D prices, despite having the WoTC post (albeit one with a strong caveat).

What I find interesting is that you can use the dollar price of gold as a way of seeing what the standard of living is of the common folk and nobility of the D&D world, and use that to measure the adventurers by. It also tells you a lot more insight, how much gold you can find in the local town, what it could put up as a reward, and how much attention bunch of adventurers with a haul from a dungeon would attract in a large town/small city/large metropolis.

A 2e sourcebook put the average peasant yearly income at 8-12 gold, and said that was a useful yardstick by how the common folk would view even low level adventurers, and their disruptive effect they would have whenever they came to a town.

We are talking a big different in scale of wealth here. There is a big difference if a low level character has a net worth in the hundreds of thousands already, as opposed to the mere 10's of thousands. Does a 20th level character have wealth in the billions?

Also, no one has suggested anything along the lines of an old gaming group of mine that pegged a gold piece at about $10 or less. That sort of measly pricing on gold pieces would put adventurer wealth and the price of spells and magic items in quite modest ranges.

Annos

2013-06-19, 09:18 AM

The last cat girl in the world was found dead earlier today do to people overthinking the value of an imaginary currency. :smallfrown:

Zubrowka74

2013-06-19, 09:53 AM

ahenobarbi

2013-06-19, 10:07 AM

Woa, its one thing to say you can't do this for D&D because it the list was made up whimsically (it actually doesn't look that way). However, Historians actually can and do put historical prices medieval goods and services. In particular, you can find prices for things like full plate (depends on the exact armor you are calling full plate and the quality but ranges from in the 100ks to well above $1M). There are, of course, several methodologies each yielding different prices, but they tend to agree in scale.

Yes I know they do. And it annoys me a lot. Because price means anything only in context of all other prices. And relation between prices changed a lot. So you need to establish context anyways. So why do it in "modern" currency not in original?

Deadline

2013-06-19, 10:15 AM

Umm, trying to draw a direct comparison between the medieval period and D&D is madness! Every commoner in D&D is literate!

But hey, I don't like catgirls, so:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unskilled_labor

Generally, it's actually possible for dirt farmers to be considered unskilled labor. Though it is more likely that the numerous farm hands and the like were the unskilled labor, with the farmer acting as the skilled overseer.

In the modern era, unskilled labor generally falls under blue collar work (though some blue collar workers are considered skilled labor).

Asteron

2013-06-19, 10:24 AM

To all who are using a 5 workday week for their math : I ain't sure this applies to medieval times. It's more like 6 workdays a week. Or 7 for serfs, 0 for for nobility.

Even later on, I think they only had one day off. After the French Revolution they changed the calendar and introduced a 10 day week. This irked the people because it gave them only one day off for every 9 worked, if I recall correctly.

I'm also fairly certain that a week is 10 days in D&D (at the very least its 10 days in Forgotten Realms (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Tenday).) That changes the calculations a bit.

Zubrowka74

2013-06-19, 10:27 AM

Yes it does in FR, although I don't recall any weekends.

Spuddles

2013-06-19, 10:43 AM

You will have a hard time getting an answer to the first question. The prices of goods we're familiar with in real life do not have a consistent conversion factor to get D&D prices of the same goods. Oh yes, and modern prices of essentially the same thing vary between IRL stores and manufacturers (some of this is due to quality differences, some of this is due to advertising differences).

However, being 'rich' is relatively easy to measure: Rich people have other people working for them for no other reason that the luxury of it. A Rich person owns a nice home, has someone clean it for them, and eats nice food. I don't recall the costs of a nice home in D&D, but a trained hireling (Cook/maid?) + an untrained hirling (butler) would be 4 sp/day, plus their upkeep (yes, you have to feed and shelter them). If they have a room in your own house, and make Craft checks for the food, you can get by at 1/3rd food costs. 3 sp (*2, /3)= 2 sp/day for keeping the two of them up with "common" food, and 5 sp/day (* the number of people in your family, /3) for your own meals. So if you've got, say, yourself, your wife, and three children, a butler, and a cook/maid, you're burning (5*5/3)+4+2=14.333333333 sp/day, or 5231.666666667 sp/year (=523.16... gp/year). You'll be occasionally buying other things (clothing, jewlery, horses, feed for horses, et cetera), so let's round that up to an even 600 gp/year income to be considered 'rich', plus owning a good home with enough rooms to house your servants as well. You'll need more if there are taxes to worry about.

From an economic standpoint, at least for a non-control economy (hard to that pseudo-european aristocrats aren't the control economy), you hire other people because your time is more valuable than theirs. A lady has more to gain by studying latin and practicing her lute skills than she does cleaning chamber pots; a knight has more to gain (ie produces more wealth) when he prepares for campaign.

Of course, the feudal system wasn't exactly a market economy and the knight practicing his sword arm on the peasantry was enforcing a control economy.

To all who are using a 5 workday week for their math : I ain't sure this applies to medieval times. It's more like 6 workdays a week. Or 7 for serfs, 0 for for nobility.

Even later on, I think they only had one day off. After the French Revolution they changed the calendar and introduced a 10 day week. This irked the people because it gave them only one day off for every 9 worked, if I recall correctly.

I used a 7 day week in all my calculations; afaik, D&D weeks are 7 days. Or does a paladin's remove disease ability get a holiday? :smallwink:

Yes I know they do. And it annoys me a lot. Because price means anything only in context of all other prices. And relation between prices changed a lot. So you need to establish context anyways. So why do it in "modern" currency not in original?

Because we're familiar with the modern currency? Measures of purchasing power parity are important, both in comparing currencies between, say, Kenya and the UK, or Medieval Poland and 20th century Australia.

They're not fruitless endeavors, and when executed properly, are quite informative. The parts that the model cannot explain are often just as, if not more, interesting than the parts it can.

Umm, trying to draw a direct comparison between the medieval period and D&D is madness! Every commoner in D&D is literate!

But hey, I don't like catgirls, so:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unskilled_labor

Generally, it's actually possible for dirt farmers to be considered unskilled labor. Though it is more likely that the numerous farm hands and the like were the unskilled labor, with the farmer acting as the skilled overseer.

In the modern era, unskilled labor generally falls under blue collar work (though some blue collar workers are considered skilled labor).

I considered that unskilled labor = no relevant skills.

An untrained profession check should be 10 for the average untrained laborer. That 10 would be 5 gp, or 50 sp/week. That's an average of 7 sp a day. The only way you're getting 1sp a day is if you rolled a 1 or 2 on your checks (average 1.4), Then that's 7sp a week, for 1 sp a day. Scaling to a 5 or 6 day week only makes the problem more stark.

That is, if the laborer works on their own. Capital investment is a big deal, though, so it could be that many laborers cannot afford the tools &c of the profession, so work at others' firms. In this case, they earn 1.4sp a day (see math in previous posts), which is pretty dang close to the 1sp a day in the profession section.

Reddish Mage

2013-06-19, 10:44 AM

Yes I know they do. And it annoys me a lot. Because price means anything only in context of all other prices. And relation between prices changed a lot. So you need to establish context anyways. So why do it in "modern" currency not in original?

So like utiles, economic units (eu's) and so on? For that matter I could have done it by converting directly to pence, shillings, and pound sterlings (the medieval hard currency, not modern GBP). The reason to do it in a modern currency is 1) It means something to forum participants 2) We have a fair amount of data from historians on the subject.

I'm only trying to get an idea of the scale of wealth here. This is why I think using wages is a good idea. If no one in a medium-sized town makes more then a few hundred gold in a year, that's a very significant the DM thinks about plopping down an alchemist or a magic shop there as if it was no big deal.

So if you prefer to simply talk gold, then here's some questions. How much gold is in an average town, or even an average Kingdom? Who could afford magic items and spells? At what point are the PCs considered wealthy? Is there a point at which the PCs' wealth rivals that of the King's or even the Kingdom's?

ahenobarbi

2013-06-19, 11:17 AM

So like utiles, economic units (eu's) and so on? For that matter I could have done it by converting directly to pence, shillings, and pound sterlings. The reason to do it in a modern currency is 1) It means something to forum participants 2) We have a fair amount of data from historians on the subject.

I'm only trying to get an idea of the scale of wealth here. This is why I think using wages is a good idea. If no one in a medium-sized town makes more then a few hundred gold in a year, that's a very significant the DM thinks about plopping down an alchemist or a magic shop there as if it was no big deal.

So if you prefer to simply talk gold, then here's some questions. How much gold is in an average town, or even an average Kingdom? Who could afford magic items and spells? At what point are the PCs considered wealthy? Is there a point at which the PCs' wealth rivals that of the King's or even the Kingdom's?

According to this rather amusing post (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19573350/?liveView=0) commoner family can make 10gp/week, of it consumes 6gp worth, leaving some 4gp/week surplus.

This means even regular humans with moderate skill can afford minor magic items or a bit of spell casting if needed (like sickness).

Level 2 WBL is 900gp - the commoner would need to work 4.5 years for that. So it's considerable amount of money for "regular" people.
Level 6 WBL (13000gp) is more than our sample commoner family could accumulate in a lifetime.
I guess PC became really wealthy somewhere in between.

Spuddles

2013-06-19, 11:23 AM

I guess PC became really wealthy somewhere in between.

A PC is supposed to have 13.33 encounters before leveling up. Assuming we go with the traditional murderous hobo archetype, our level 6 PC has killed around 80 creatures by level 80 and presumably taken their things. Or at the very least, broke into their homes and took their stuff.

If all of the PC's victims level 2, with 900 gp each, the PC now has 72,000gp of... redistributed wealth. Of course, much of that wealth could be locked up in capital. If it's human capital, it looks like slavery's on the table. If we go by the standard "one half value" for sold items, that's 36,000gp in cash.

Bakkan

2013-06-19, 11:26 AM

An untrained profession check should be 10 for the average untrained laborer.

Profession is Trained Only.

Spuddles

2013-06-19, 11:34 AM

Profession is Trained Only.

/face to palm

Deadline

2013-06-19, 11:55 AM

/face to palm

Also, jobs that utilize unskilled labor are not the sorts of thing that get better if you are skilled. Because by definition, they require no skill.

Take a factory worker who inspects shoes. It doesn't matter how skilled that person is, you could replace them tomorrow with a fresh new face and it would have little to no impact on the performance of the job. Hence, a flat rate of pay (unaffected by the worker's skill) would be appropriate for modelling the wage said worker would make.

It also doesn't help matters that D&D muddies the waters and puts at least some of the historically "unskilled labor" jobs under the profession skill. That makes comparisons difficult, to say the least.

Here's a question, are the wages per day for skilled hirelings less than their average profession checks would indicate?

hamishspence

2013-06-19, 12:08 PM

Umm, trying to draw a direct comparison between the medieval period and D&D is madness! Every commoner in D&D is literate!

Depends on the setting. Forgotten Realms (Races of Faerun book) specifies that human commoners are usually illiterate- and in some regions several other classes are, too.

Reddish Mage

2013-06-19, 12:10 PM

According to this rather amusing post (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19573350/?liveView=0) commoner family can make 10gp/week, of it consumes 6gp worth, leaving some 4gp/week surplus.

This means even regular humans with moderate skill can afford minor magic items or a bit of spell casting if needed (like sickness).

Level 2 WBL is 900gp - the commoner would need to work 4.5 years for that. So it's considerable amount of money for "regular" people.
Level 6 WBL (13000gp) is more than our sample commoner family could accumulate in a lifetime.
I guess PC became really wealthy somewhere in between.

A lot of these analyses do not take into account taxes (which historically included a few weeks of labor time in addition to taking 60% of the yield of a farm!), and there are certainly significant expenses other than food.

CowardlyPaladin

2013-06-19, 12:13 PM

In most economic systems prior to the invention of paper money the value of a coin was determined by how "Pure" it was in its materials, I know the Roman Emperors tended to devalue the currency when they wanted money.

TheStranger

2013-06-19, 12:31 PM

I considered that unskilled labor = no relevant skills.

An untrained profession check should be 10 for the average untrained laborer. That 10 would be 5 gp, or 50 sp/week. That's an average of 7 sp a day. The only way you're getting 1sp a day is if you rolled a 1 or 2 on your checks (average 1.4), Then that's 7sp a week, for 1 sp a day. Scaling to a 5 or 6 day week only makes the problem more stark.

That is, if the laborer works on their own. Capital investment is a big deal, though, so it could be that many laborers cannot afford the tools &c of the profession, so work at others' firms. In this case, they earn 1.4sp a day (see math in previous posts), which is pretty dang close to the 1sp a day in the profession section.

That's an odd definition of "unskilled." I mean, it's a perfectly straightforward and reasonable definition from a literal standpoint, but that's not what's generally meant by unskilled labor. Unskilled laborers are the people who work for other people doing relatively simple tasks. That doesn't mean that none of them have skill ranks in whatever they're doing, because I can't imagine a job so simple that you could walk in off the street and do it as well as somebody who's been at it for years. But we're talking about maids, porters, ditchdiggers, fieldhands, and the like; people with no special skills (in the colloquial sense, not the D&D sense) who probably work for somebody else, and most likely don't get much more than they need to live on, if they can find work at all. The Profession or Craft rules are a horrible way to model an economy, and I suspect that if they give a reasonable wage for these people it's probably an accident.

The problem with using laborer wages as a point of comparison for GP value is that the price of labor varies dramatically across places and times. An unskilled laborer in most parts of the U.S. makes somewhere between minimum wage and maybe $10/hour. In some other countries, that same person makes less than $1/hour. In the U.S. 100 years ago, that person might have made maybe $3/hour (totally unscientific number) in 2013 dollars. Some of that is explained by the different cost of living in these scenarios, but that doesn't explain all of the discrepancy.

I think the posters who want to average the relative prices of several items have the right idea. Any single item, whether it's metal, bread, salt, labor, or whatever, is going to fluctuate wildly relative to the other items over time based on scarcity and demand. I would suspect that the best you're going to get is averaging as many of the mundane items as you can from the equipment lists. I wouldn't get into weapons, armor, and other adventuring gear, since game balance comes into play in how those are priced. Even then, you're likely to get some absurd results, just because the pricing probably consisted of developers asking each other, "Tom, how much would you pay for a chicken?" rather than any in-depth research.

dascarletm

2013-06-19, 01:15 PM

Basing the DnD gold worth to current currency is a tricky question. When looking at the items you need to base it off of you need to consider a few things:

1. Did it exist in the real world?

2. Is the price set due to balance issues? (Ex: magic items use a formula to calculate the price, magic weapons are the ench bonus ^2 x 2000gp. This doesn't take into account a multitude of factors, such as the amount of available casters to make said items and the amount of people who want it. If in my campaign there is only 1 wizard ever who can create +10 items and he is the only being that can make them, then the worth would be higher in actuality)

3. Would said item be made in the same way/is it wanted as much as it was back then/is now/is in a DnD universe. (example: I am currently wearing a purple shirt. In medieval times only kings could afford such colored clothing. In DnD any 1st level wizard can prestidigitation an item purple.)

So, what fits these criteria? anything?

Reddish Mage

2013-06-19, 01:31 PM

[LOTS OF STUFF ABOUT THE ABSURDITY OF THIS ACTIVITY CONCLUDING]... you're likely to get some absurd results, just because the pricing probably consisted of developers asking each other, "Tom, how much would you pay for a chicken?" rather than any in-depth research.

Let's assume the developers put a little thought into how they priced basic goods and services and see if we get results that are not absurd....well look at this! Quite a few people did various calculations, based on the service and goods chart, or the skill table, and they got results that prima facie seem to make some sense!

Its one thing to be saying we are making a macroeconomic model for our fantasy world. That's foolhardy or at least an academic paper: see this Everquest2 study (http://www.academia.edu/737381/As_Real_As_Real_Macroeconomic_Behavior_In_a_Large-Scale_Virtual_World_Paper_In_Press_at_New_Media_an d_Society) and also On Virtual Economies (http://www.ifo-geschaeftsklima.info/pls/guestci/download/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%202002/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%20July%202002/cesifo_wp752.pdf)Of course, these papers are just about virtual economies and currency and have nothing to do with purposely modeling a fantastic economy so it resembles a real one.

What we are doing here is getting a prima facie sense of how much wealth is in a typical inhabitant of a D&D world will have, as well as how much would an adventurer have, as well as the affordability of D&D goods. These answers can be use to build a richer game world and answer basic questions:

1) Can the commoner afford magic, to what extent?
2) What economic strata would low-level wizards and clerics occupy? How about mid-level?
3) I want to price items that are not-listed. Approximately how much should x cost?

Reddish Mage

2013-06-19, 02:14 PM

There's another use to this analysis, and that allows us to recognize the consequences of a story system that deviates by making gold cheap. OOTS uses what I would call an "adventurer-centric" view of the world. One in which adventuring is a normalized activity such that Roy's or V's family can seem very middle-class, despite Eugene's and V's solid wizard levels.

Haley's unremarkable-appearing beauty products are 5 gp, which in the more common analysis here comes to over well $1000 per box. V gets thousands of gp worth of diamond dust from a ordinary looking store and V has to stand in a line to get the dust. V is interrupted by a teleporting wizard hired by her mate. That's V's mate, who appears to be an ordinary baker, and not say, CEO of Keebler. You get the feeling that magic is pretty much commonplace the world over and even fairly high level characters are no more than upper-middle class at best.

This has enormous effects on the game world and how everyone perceives people with PC class levels in general and adventurers in specific. This effects what commoners know about their world (quite a lot!) and what they expect (what do we have magic! when did we have it? always!)

TheStranger

2013-06-19, 02:52 PM

Let's assume the developers put a little thought into how they priced basic goods and services and see if we get results that are not absurd....well look at this! Quite a few people did various calculations, based on the service and goods chart, or the skill table, and they got results that prima facie seem to make some sense!

Yeah, but you also get some absurd results. If you figure 1gp = $100 (on the low end of this thread's scale), you get things like the $200 empty barrel, the $100 flint&steel, the $700 lantern, the $200 shovel, the $100 waterskin, and the $1000 tent. If 1 gp = $500, those prices get even more ridiculous.

I'm not arguing with the benefits of the exercise at all, just pointing out some of the difficulties. Like I said, you can iron out a lot of the odd results by averaging the costs of a lot of different goods, and you probably do get a result in the $100 range. But just because you can get a semi-reasonable result on average doesn't mean there's actually any internal consistency beyond passing somebody's eyeball test before it went out the door.

SowZ

2013-06-19, 02:55 PM

You realize that, if we assume a metropolis includes the surrounding farm-land necessary to feed its populace, that ma and pa represent 2 out of only about 32 second level commoners in the whole city of 25000+ people. All the second level commoners in city make up less than a 10th of 1% of the population. You've also got the farm sitting on 200gp worth of masterwork tools.
Then of course there's the fact that Pa is optimized to do nothing but work at proffession (farmer) which is too much of an abstraction. Profession is for things like gambler, dock-hand, waiter, etc; things with a -very- narrow skill set.

A farmer would need handle animal to get the ox to work; survival to estimate the weather for determining when to plant, when to harvest, when to put the livestock in because of an approaching storm, etc; a couple ranks in one or another craft skill for repairing a broken plow, scythe, or other tool; a few CC in knowledge nature so that he could tell when female livestock went into estrus and for birthing the livestock he breeds; and a rank or two in ride and/or profession (teamster) to reliably control his horse or cart if they spook when going into town with wares to sell. Nevermind the couple throwaway ranks in know (local) for all the gossip folks do when there's no such thing as TV or internet.

Unskilled labor includes any job that doesn't require formal schooling.

What are you talking about? Lodging in a common room and eating food with meat enough to not die before you're thirty costs 8sp a day. Over 2gp a day if you want your own room and a literal pot to piss in.

You can eat on coppers a day. You don't need to eat meat. Meat doesn't make you live longer. A whole loaf of bread is 2 coppers. You can survive in D&D on 2 Silver pieces a day.

Yeah, but you also get some absurd results. If you figure 1gp = $100 (on the low end of this thread's scale), you get things like the $200 empty barrel, the $100 flint&steel, the $700 lantern, the $200 shovel, the $100 waterskin, and the $1000 tent. If 1 gp = $500, those prices get even more ridiculous.

I'm not arguing with the benefits of the exercise at all, just pointing out some of the difficulties. Like I said, you can iron out a lot of the odd results by averaging the costs of a lot of different goods, and you probably do get a result in the $100 range. But just because you can get a semi-reasonable result on average doesn't mean there's actually any internal consistency beyond passing somebody's eyeball test before it went out the door.

It works out just fine. It just means tools are far more expensive. I'm a carpenter. If I made a barrel by hand, with hand tools? I'd charge a few hundred bucks for it. Shoot, large barrels that size made with a planar and grinder still aren't cheap.

The 100 dollar flint and steel comes from the fact that steel was very, very pricey. Making good steel is a lengthy and expensive process and has lots of middlemen. (Miners, smelters, caravans, etc.) A 1000 dollar tent is also totally valid. If you wanted a decent sized tent made out of hide and hand carved poles or hand sewn canvas, you'd pay nearly a thousand dollars for it.

The lantern, even. That's mostly metal. Metal was very expensive. People really valued their tools. We are used to having four flashlights and throwing it away when it gets busted. We have knife sets with 12 knives in them. People wouldn't live like that back then. Food was actually more plentiful than people think and work hours shorter than people think, but tools and possessions were definitely more valued back in the day.

Spuddles

2013-06-19, 03:11 PM

Yeah, but you also get some absurd results. If you figure 1gp = $100 (on the low end of this thread's scale), you get things like the $200 empty barrel, the $100 flint&steel, the $700 lantern, the $200 shovel, the $100 waterskin, and the $1000 tent. If 1 gp = $500, those prices get even more ridiculous.

I'm not arguing with the benefits of the exercise at all, just pointing out some of the difficulties. Like I said, you can iron out a lot of the odd results by averaging the costs of a lot of different goods, and you probably do get a result in the $100 range. But just because you can get a semi-reasonable result on average doesn't mean there's actually any internal consistency beyond passing somebody's eyeball test before it went out the door.

Why would you expect purchasing parity between a quasi-market feudal economy from a thousand years ago and a modern information-age globalized economy?

If you got the same numbers, it wouldn't make any sense at all. It would turn maceoeconomics on its head and you could publish in any econ journal you wanted to.

Assuming of course that a day's dnd wage is commensurate to a RL peasant's wage.

hamishspence

2013-06-19, 03:18 PM

You can eat on coppers a day. You don't need to eat meat. Meat doesn't make you live longer. A whole loaf of bread is 2 coppers. You can survive in D&D on 2 Silver pieces a day.

Grains alone tend to lead to certain kinds of malnutrition. Meat may not be essential- but it helps a lot. And it doesn't have to be farm animals- there's fish, pigeons, and so forth.

Big Fau

2013-06-19, 03:19 PM

Don't know where you live, but it's between $1.49 and $1.79 here, depending on brand and type of bread.

Of course, I'm in the upper Bread Basket (Minnesota), so that probably affects prices.

I've got similar prices here in the Deep South, despite the effort we go through to keep the mold off of it.

TheStranger

2013-06-19, 03:21 PM

It works out just fine. It just means tools are far more expensive. I'm a carpenter. If I made a barrel by hand, with hand tools? I'd charge a few hundred bucks for it. Shoot, large barrels that size made with a planar and grinder still aren't cheap.

The 100 dollar flint and steel comes from the fact that steel was very, very pricey. Making good steel is a lengthy and expensive process and has lots of middlemen. (Miners, smelters, caravans, etc.) A 1000 dollar tent is also totally valid. If you wanted a decent sized tent made out of hide and hand carved poles or hand sewn canvas, you'd pay nearly a thousand dollars for it.

The lantern, even. That's mostly metal. Metal was very expensive. People really valued their tools. We are used to having four flashlights and throwing it away when it gets busted. We have knife sets with 12 knives in them. People wouldn't live like that back then. Food was actually more plentiful than people think and work hours shorter than people think, but tools and possessions were definitely more valued back in the day.

I'll defer to your expertise on the barrel, but I don't know about the rest of it. A dagger is 2gp; is flint&steel half as valuable as a dagger? I'd say 1/10 the price at most, given the relative amounts of metal and work going into each. I agree that metal is expensive, but there's no internal consistency to it.

Also, I think that we overprice hand-crafted items because they're so rare today. Hand-crafted furniture, clothing, etc. is pretty exceptional today because only a few people make it, and buyers pay a premium for the cachet of "artisan" work. If every village had one or more people who could make it professionally, and a bunch more who could make what they needed, I think it becomes a lot less exceptional.

Finally, you can usually justify paying a high price, like $1000 for a tent, if you assume that it's a really nice tent. But for a relatively simple canvas affair, that seems outrageous.

Edit to avoid double-posting, though I'll probably be ninja'd three times by the time I finish:

Why would you expect purchasing parity between a quasi-market feudal economy from a thousand years ago and a modern information-age globalized economy?

If you got the same numbers, it wouldn't make any sense at all. It would turn maceoeconomics on its head and you could publish in any econ journal you wanted to.

Assuming of course that a day's dnd wage is commensurate to a RL peasant's wage.

I don't expect purchasing parity, which is why I think it's problematic to use the prices listed in the PHB to calculate the value of a gold piece in today's dollars. I'm not sure what you're objecting to.

Also, I wouldn't describe the D&D economy as a "quasi-market feudal economy" as much as "a list of prices made up by various people over the past 30 or so years."

SowZ

2013-06-19, 03:32 PM

I'll defer to your expertise on the barrel, but I don't know about the rest of it. A dagger is 2gp; is flint&steel half as valuable as a dagger? I'd say 1/10 the price at most, given the relative amounts of metal and work going into each. I agree that metal is expensive, but there's no internal consistency to it.

Also, I think that we overprice hand-crafted items because they're so rare today. Hand-crafted furniture, clothing, etc. is pretty exceptional today because only a few people make it, and buyers pay a premium for the cachet of "artisan" work. If every village had one or more people who could make it professionally, and a bunch more who could make what they needed, I think it becomes a lot less exceptional.

Finally, you can usually justify paying a high price, like $1000 for a tent, if you assume that it's a really nice tent. But for a relatively simple canvas affair, that seems outrageous.

Edit to avoid double-posting, though I'll probably be ninja'd three times by the time I finish:

I don't expect purchasing parity, which is why I think it's problematic to use the prices listed in the PHB to calculate the value of a gold piece in today's dollars. I'm not sure what you're objecting to.

Also, I wouldn't describe the D&D economy as a "quasi-market feudal economy" as much as "a list of prices made up by various people over the past 30 or so years."

The prices aren't so high because of the expertise and art value. They are so high because of the hours. Making hide is a stinky, long, and arduous affair. Making enough rawhide for an entire tent will require multiple animals to be hunted, skinned, fleshes, fur stripped, sewn together, oil/rain treated, and finally held together by tent poles.

As for canvas? Canvas would be pretty expensive when you consider they don't have sewing machines. Look at a blanket or piece of clothing. It has thousands and thousands of stitches and places where one thread crosses another, right? Imagine every one of those had to be threaded by hand. Threading the canvas and weaving the wool would make hand-sewing look quick and easy by comparison.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-06-19, 03:32 PM

You can eat on coppers a day. You don't need to eat meat. Meat doesn't make you live longer. A whole loaf of bread is 2 coppers. You can survive in D&D on 2 Silver pieces a day.Maybe not by RAW, but IRL you definitely need meat. The essential proteins, vitamins, and minerals that it provides are absolutely necessary to not die of malnutrition. In the modern world a globalized market can provide plants from all over the world that -can- replace meat to a fair extent, but even then there are certain nutrients that can only be found in sufficient quantities in meat products. In a pseudo-medieval world, like D&D, where you'll probably never see a vegetable that wasn't grown within twenty miles for the last 100 years or so, you -need- meat.

It works out just fine. It just means tools are far more expensive. I'm a carpenter. If I made a barrel by hand, with hand tools? I'd charge a few hundred bucks for it. Shoot, large barrels that size made with a planar and grinder still aren't cheap.

The 100 dollar flint and steel comes from the fact that steel was very, very pricey. Making good steel is a lengthy and expensive process and has lots of middlemen. (Miners, smelters, caravans, etc.) A 1000 dollar tent is also totally valid. If you wanted a decent sized tent made out of hide and hand carved poles or hand sewn canvas, you'd pay nearly a thousand dollars for it.

The lantern, even. That's mostly metal. Metal was very expensive. People really valued their tools. We are used to having four flashlights and throwing it away when it gets busted. We have knife sets with 12 knives in them. People wouldn't live like that back then. Food was actually more plentiful than people think and work hours shorter than people think, but tools and possessions were definitely more valued back in the day.

I don't know if I agree with this or not, but my hardware makes deleting large blocks of text a chore. Stupid Wii.

SowZ

2013-06-19, 03:34 PM

Grains alone tend to lead to certain kinds of malnutrition. Meat may not be essential- but it helps a lot. And it doesn't have to be farm animals- there's fish, pigeons, and so forth.

Sure. But my example was that someone can live very frugally for a couple weeks, not spending any more than is necessary, and then buy a cow. You could live off bread, a few potatoes, and the occasional chicken breast for a couple weeks and be fine.

hamishspence

2013-06-19, 03:35 PM

Has anyone found a set of medieval prices for various items (maybe averages) and compared price ratios to the ratios for D&D items?

Or perhaps renaissance prices and ratios?

Might be handy to figure out which things are disproportionately overpriced or underpriced- and which tend to be fairly consistent in their ratios.

Might depend on the edition- but I could see someone (Gygax?) actually having done the research at least once.

Soras Teva Gee

2013-06-19, 03:37 PM

WotC has an official answer to this question. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ask/20061110a)

While their conversion looks not unreasonable the price of gold on the troy ounce is trading at $1350 today. Gold has had quite the bubble market the last six years.

However I don't think all prices have doubled to follow along either. Just think of what a killing savy adventurers could have made.

A good case study for how value is all relative.

SowZ

2013-06-19, 03:38 PM

Maybe not by RAW, but IRL you definitely need meat. The essential proteins, vitamins, and minerals that it provides are absolutely necessary to not die of malnutrition. In the modern world a globalized market can provide plants from all over the world that -can- replace meat to a fair extent, but even then there are certain nutrients that can only be found in sufficient quantities in meat products. In a pseudo-medieval world, like D&D, where you'll probably never see a vegetable that wasn't grown within twenty miles for the last 100 years or so, you -need- meat.

I don't know if I agree with this or not, but my hardware makes deleting large blocks of text a chore. Stupid Wii.

There are records of cultures practicing vegetarianism as early as the 6th century B.C.

Has anyone found a set of medieval prices for various items (maybe averages) and compared price ratios to the ratios for D&D items?

Or perhaps renaissance prices and ratios?

Might be handy to figure out which things are disproportionately overpriced or underpriced- and which tend to be fairly consistent in their ratios.

Might depend on the edition- but I could see someone (Gygax?) actually having done the research at least once.

I have a list of 9th-10th century Anglo-Saxon prices, (in pounds, shillings, and pences,) for everyday items, livestock, and criminal fines/leveys if that would help.

hamishspence

2013-06-19, 03:42 PM

It might. Unfortunately I don't have a 1st ed book to compare prices to.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-06-19, 03:44 PM

Sure. But my example was that someone can live very frugally for a couple weeks, not spending any more than is necessary, and then buy a cow. You could live off bread, a few potatoes, and the occasional chicken breast for a couple weeks and be fine.
My financial situation makes it necessary to eat like that, except I eat chicken or ground beef several times a week, and I do experience the effects of a certain degree of malnutrition.

Eating like this consistently -will- shorten your life.

There are records of cultures practicing vegetarianism as early as the 6th century B.C.

And how long did those people usually live? I'm betting they didn't often make it much past middle-aged.

Also, how many of those cultures considered fish to not count as an animal?

SowZ

2013-06-19, 03:48 PM

A little history, 1 pence=5 shillings. 48 shillings=1 pound. I didn't compile this list. Credit goes to Regia.org

Costs

In the following tables I will give the value in Early English pounds (l), shillings (s) or pence (d), weight of silver (g) and modern pounds sterling (£)

After each item I will note whether the price comes from Britain [B], Western Europe [W], Central Europe [C], Northern Europe [N] or Eastern Europe [E].

Livestock

Item Price Weight Modern
15 chickens [C] 1d 1.55g £20
Cow [E] 64.5d 100g £1,290
Cow [C] 88.5d 137g £1,770
Ewe and Lamb [B] 1s 8g
£100

Ox [E] 80.5d 125g £1,610
Ox [C] 88.5d 137g £1,770
Pig [E] 20d 30g £600
Sheep [E] 10d 15g £300
Fledged Peregrine Falcon [B] 1l 372g £4,800
Fledged Sparrow Hawk [B] 24d 37g £480
Foreigner's Lap Dog [B] 4d 6g £80
Freeholder's Buck Hound [B] 120d 186g £2,400
Freeman's Lap Dog [B] 120d 186g £2,400
Hawk's nest (Peregrine) [B] 1l 372g £4,800
Sparrow Hawk Nest [B] 24d 37g £480
Unfledged Peregrine Falcon [B] 120d 186g £2,400
Unfledged Sparrow Hawk [B] 12d 18g £240
Virgin Swarm of Bees [B] 16d 25g £320
Swarm of bees from a second swarm [B] 8d 12g £160
Swarm of bees from Virgin swarm [B] 12d 18g £240
Hive of Bees [B] 24d 37g £480
Hive swarm after august [B] 4d 6g £80
Old Swarm of Bees [B] 24d 37g £480
Second Swarm of Bees [B] 12d 18g £240
Horse [E] 193.5d 300g £3,870
Horse [N] 197.5d 306g £3,950
Horse [C] 308.5d 478g £6,170
King's Greyhound [B] 120d 186g £2,400
King's Hunting Dog, trained [B] 1l 372g £4,800
King's Hunting Dog, untrained [B] 120d 186g £2,400
King's Hunting Dog, 1 yr old [B] 60d 93g £1,200
King's Hunting Dog, young [B] 30d 46g £600
King's Hunting Dog, Dog, pup with unopened eyes [B] 15d 23g £300
King's Lap Dog [B] 1l 372g £4,800
Common House Dog [B] 4d 6g £80
Stranger's or Dunghill Dog [B] 4d 6g £80
Male Slave [N] 197.5d 306g £3,950
Female Slave [E] 131.5d 204g £2,630
Arms and Armour

Item Price Weight Modern
Helmet [C] 53s 410g £5,300
Mailshirt [C] 529d 820g £10,580
Shield and Spear [C] 88.5d 137g £1,770
Spear [W] 33d 51g £660
Sword [W] 81.25d 126g £1,625
Sword [B] 240s 1860g £24,000
Sword and Scabbard [C] 308.5d 478g £6,170
Fines, etc.

Item Price Weight Modern
Accepting service of another's ceorl [B] 120s 930g £12,000
Ceorl seeking new lord [B] 60s 465g £6,000
Binding an innocent ceorl [B] 10s 77g £1,000
Binding an innocent ceorl and shaving him like a priest [B] 60s 465g £6,000
Fighting (not in war) [B] 120s 930g £12,000
Ceorl entering into illicit union [B] 50s 387g £5,000
Thegn entering into illicit union [B] 100s 775g £10,000
Ceorl neglecting fyrd duty [B] 30s 232g £3,000
Failure to perform fyrd duty [B] 40-50s 310-387g £4,000-5,000
Landless thegn neglecting fyrd duty [B] 60s 465g £6,000
Thegn neglecting fyrd duty[B] 120s 930g £12,000 (+ land)
Danegeld paid between 990-1015 [B] 250,000l+ 93,000kg+ £1,200,000,000+
Freeman working on Sunday [B] 60s 465g £6,000
Ordering a slave to work on Sunday [B] 30s 232g £3,000
Priest working on Sunday [B] 120s 930g £12,000
Raping a female slave [B] 65s 504g £6,500
Holding a woman's breast [B] 5s 39g £500
Seducing a free woman [B] 60s 465g £6,000
Throw a woman down but not lie with her [B] 10s 77g £1,000
Not baptising child within 30 days of birth [B] 30s 232g £3,000
Removing a nun from a nunnery without permission [B] 120s 930g £12,000
Reward for catching thief [B] 10s 77g £1,000
Violation of an archbishop's protection [B] 3l 1,116g £14,400
Violation of bishop/eolderman's protection [B] 2l 744g £9,600
Violation of ceorl's protection [B] 6s 46g £600
Violation of church's protection [B] 50s 387g £5,000
Violation of the king's protection[B] 5l 1,860g £24,000
Note: There were many other fines, but including them all would take up too much space.
What is clear, though, is that in Anglo-Saxon England what was most important was not what you did, but who you did it to.
Weregilds

Item Price Weight Modern
Slave [B] 60s 465g £6,000
Ceorl [B] 200s 1550g £20,000
Landless Thegn [B] 600s 4650g £60,000
Thegn [B] 1200s 9300g £120,000
Landless Welsh [B] 50s 387g £5,000
Landed Welsh with 1/2 Hide [B] 80s 620g £8,000
Welsh tribute payer (1 hide) [B] 120s 930g £12,000
Welsh tribute payer's son [B] 80s 620g £8,000
King's Welsh Horseman [B] 200s 1550g £20,000
Welsh with 5 hides [B] 600s 4650g £60,000
Miscellaneous

Item Price Weight Modern
1kg Corn [W] 2d 3g £40
Bridle [W] 6.5d 10g £130
Spurs [W] 13d 20g £400
Stirrups [W] 81.25d 126g £1,625
Buckle [W] 3.25d 5g £65
Cloak [N] 7.75d 12g £155
Cow eye [B] 1d 1.5g £20
Cow horn [B] 2d 3g £40
Cow Tail [B] 5d 8g £100
Ox Eye [B] 5d 8g £100
Ox Horn [B] 10d 15g £200
Ox Tail [B] 1s 8g £100
Fleece [B] 2d 3g £40
Beaver Skin [B] 120d 186d £2,400
Fox skin [B] 8d 12g £160
Marten Skin [B] 24d 37g £480
Otter skin [B] 8d 12g £160
Wolf skin [B] 8d 12g £160
Fyrdsman's pay/month [B] 10s 77g £1,000
Hide of land (approx. 120 acres) [B] 1l 372g £4,800
Land tax/hide [B] 2s 15g £200
Knife [W] 2d 3g £40
Silk (1oz) [E] 37d 57g £740

My financial situation makes it necessary to eat like that, except I eat chicken or ground beef several times a week, and I do experience the effects of a certain degree of malnutrition.

Eating like this consistently -will- shorten your life.

And how long did those people usually live? I'm betting they didn't often make it much past middle-aged.

Also, how many of those cultures considered fish to not count as an animal?

I can't say exactly how long they lived, but it was common for philosophers and entire religious groups/cults in both Ancient Greece and Rome to practice Vegetarianism of varying degrees of intensity. As far as I'm aware, this did usually mean abstaining from fish though some ate cheese and milk. You've heard of some of them, I'm sure. Pythagoras? Vegetarian.

During the medieval ages, monks frequently forbade themselves from eating meat. Vegetarianism was considered valid and at times considered sinful not to be a vegetarian throughout Indian, (Asia,) and Japanese history.

Deadline

2013-06-19, 04:54 PM

During the medieval ages, monks frequently forbade themselves from eating meat. Vegetarianism was considered valid and at times considered sinful not to be a vegetarian throughout Indian, (Asia,) and Japanese history.

I'm fairly certain at least two of those cultures didn't consider eating fish to be eating meat. Certainly the medieval monks didn't. So a "vegetarian" in those cultures was free to eat fish, thus alleviating the malnutrition issue. Also, if the culture had ready, cheap access to an alternative source of protein (like say, soy products), the malnutrition issue wouldn't crop up as badly there.

Whether or not philosophers and religions/cults decided to practice vegetarianism is irrelevant to whether or not that practice shortened their lifespan. People do foolish things with their dietary intake that shorten their lives all the time, and that certainly hasn't stopped today (many fast foods are just awful for you).

As was said before, Vegetarianism can be practiced relatively safely in the modern age, given our ready access to nutritional meat alternatives. But a few centuries ago? Almost certainly not.

SowZ

2013-06-19, 04:58 PM

I'm fairly certain at least two of those cultures didn't consider eating fish to be eating meat. Certainly the medieval monks didn't. So a "vegetarian" in those cultures was free to eat fish, thus alleviating the malnutrition issue. Also, if the culture had ready, cheap access to an alternative source of protein (like say, soy products), the malnutrition issue wouldn't crop up as badly there.

Whether or not philosophers and religions/cults decided to practice vegetarianism is irrelevant to whether or not that practice shortened their lifespan. People do foolish things with their dietary intake that shorten their lives all the time, and that certainly hasn't stopped today (many fast foods are just awful for you).

As was said before, Vegetarianism can be practiced relatively safely in the modern age, given our ready access to nutritional meat alternatives. But a few centuries ago? Almost certainly not.

The point was that it would kill you. Maybe it shortened their life. But they lived. Pythagoras lived into his 70s and was a strict vegetarian.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-06-19, 05:05 PM

The point was that it would kill you. Maybe it shortened their life. But they lived. Pythagoras lived into his 70s and was a strict vegetarian.

:smallconfused: Last I heard "shorten your life" was a common euphamism for "kill you." I'm honestly not sure that there is a practical difference between the two phrases.

In any case, I'm the one that brought it up in the first place, and I'm pretty sure I said it was "necessary to not die before your thirties" or some-such, heavily implying "shorten your life" if there is, in fact, a distinction to be made between the two phrases.

Jack_Simth

2013-06-19, 05:06 PM

Here's a question, are the wages per day for skilled hirelings less than their average profession checks would indicate?Significantly so. If you assume a trained hireling has a skill modifier of +4 (4 ranks, no feat or good tool investment, ability score of 10), and they use "make a living" checks on Craft or Profession, they get "about half [their] check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work" - so 7 gp/week (taking ten). That's 1 GP/day (for a 7 day week), vs. a Trained Hireling at 4 sp/day.

If you assume a trained hireling has Skill Focus (+3), and takes ten, that's 8.5 gp/week. If you assume a trained hireling picks up masterwork tools (+2), that's 9.5 gp/week.

Deadline

2013-06-19, 05:12 PM

The point was that it would kill you. Maybe it shortened their life. But they lived. Pythagoras lived into his 70s and was a strict vegetarian.

Yes, because "shorten your life" and "kill you" are sufficiently different to be a point of contention. :smallconfused:

Spuddles

2013-06-19, 05:48 PM

You can live off milk and potatoes indefinitely. You need something like 10 to 20 potatoes a day if you're doing enough labor to plant potatoes, as that's like a 3000-6000 calorie day.

Meat was actually very rare in people's diets, at least compared to what we're familiar with. It'd mostly be eaten during festivals or when an egg laying hen or milk cow got too old to be of much use.

In northern climates, animals were used to turn inedible grass and untillable soil into food. In southern climates, more varieties of food could be grown, which meant a diet with less animal protein and more vegetable- for every calorie of animal protein raised, you lose 10 calories of plant.

So if you want 1 calorie of energy, you need 10 calories of beef. And if that cow wants one calorie of energy, it needs 10 calories of feed. That means you need 100 calories of plants to get 1 calorie of you. This is an alright conversion ratio if you've got a lot of pasture land that wheat, etc. can't be grown on. Otherwise, wheat or rice or potato can support 10x as many people as beef.

I'm fairly certain at least two of those cultures didn't consider eating fish to be eating meat. Certainly the medieval monks didn't. So a "vegetarian" in those cultures was free to eat fish, thus alleviating the malnutrition issue. Also, if the culture had ready, cheap access to an alternative source of protein (like say, soy products), the malnutrition issue wouldn't crop up as badly there.

Whether or not philosophers and religions/cults decided to practice vegetarianism is irrelevant to whether or not that practice shortened their lifespan. People do foolish things with their dietary intake that shorten their lives all the time, and that certainly hasn't stopped today (many fast foods are just awful for you).

As was said before, Vegetarianism can be practiced relatively safely in the modern age, given our ready access to nutritional meat alternatives. But a few centuries ago? Almost certainly not.

Hindus and Buddhists have practiced pretty strict vegetarianism for centuries.

Shining Wrath

2013-06-19, 05:58 PM

Apples and oranges.

There are things that cost a whole lot in a medieval world (spyglasses) that are now children's toys.

There are things that are commonplace in a medieval world (bows) that are now fairly expensive.

Quality will also vary.

Because of the idea of interchangeable parts and the assembly line, anything that is manufactured will be much cheaper now than then, while things which are hand-crafted by artisans are not going to have dropped as much.

I suggest using 1 sp as a days wages for a common laborer, which would make it about $60, and a GP $600. But as noted above prices do NOT scale. Lodging in particular is much cheaper in a world with low population density and outdoor plumbing.

Trixie

2013-06-19, 06:01 PM

i like to use a loaf of bread/carb-loaded food(such as a stack of tortillas, a couple pieces of pita, or a bowl of rice) as the basic measurement of wealth. i suggest going through it this way, as this (while sometimes varying depending on the current economy) is generally the amount one person needs to feed themselves for one day.

in DnD, a loaf of bread costs 2 CP. so you could buy 50 loaves of bread for 1 GP. in the USA, a loaf of bread is (as a high estimate) 4 dollars. so 50 loaves cost 200 dollars, and thus, 1 GP=200 dollars. however, this depends a bit on what type of bread you are buying. it could be as low as 2 dollars per loaf, or 100 dollars per GP.
Medieval loaves are of much worse quality, though. Personally, I'd say 50-100$ = 1 GP is about right.

BTW, there are simple tools used to compare PPP (purchasing power parity). These should be at least considered, doing 1:1 comparison is bad. This, or comparing a basket of items.

A gold coin weighs about 1/3rd of an ounce (phb p.112), and an ounce of gold right now is about $1400, so a gold coin would be worth about $467.

But a gold coin is also worth 10 silver coins, and a silver coin (using the same math) would be worth $7, so a gold coin would be worth about 70 dollars.
There is huge gold price bubble going on right now. There is also the fact massive copper foundries produce silver faster than the industry can consume it, keeping price down. Any gold price comparison without keeping this in mind will be awfully skewed.

SowZ

2013-06-19, 06:24 PM

Yes, because "shorten your life" and "kill you" are sufficiently different to be a point of contention. :smallconfused:

I've still shown that people could live into their 70s on a vegetarian diet in the classical period, (well before medieval,) so regardless I don't think your point has been well established. 'That diet will kill you,' is still a statement I don't abide by. Based on what I've seen/read, at most it might kill you a few years sooner. Maybe even not then. So until you show more data, I doubt your conclusion.

Duboris

2013-06-19, 07:04 PM

10 silver, 100 copper, and a tenth of a platinum.

TuggyNE

2013-06-19, 09:41 PM

10 silver, 100 copper, and a tenth of a platinum.

So, is Sea Green now the chosen color for mathematicians' answers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MathematiciansAnswer)? :smallwink:

Spuddles

2013-06-19, 10:10 PM

So, is Sea Green now the chosen color for mathematicians' answers (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MathematiciansAnswer)? :smallwink:

Ah yes, the trivial solution.

Reddish Mage

2013-06-19, 11:03 PM

Why would you expect purchasing parity between a quasi-market feudal economy from a thousand years ago and a modern information-age globalized economy?

If you got the same numbers, it wouldn't make any sense at all. It would turn maceoeconomics on its head and you could publish in any econ journal you wanted to.

Assuming of course that a day's dnd wage is commensurate to a RL peasant's wage.

Ah yes, a unskilled laborer in contemporary America scrapes by on $50 or so, an unskilled laborer in 12th Century England scrapped by on 1 pence a day. Neither is going to be buying too many luxuries and both are going to have trouble raising a family. There's some differences in costs of things today (you can check out the price list and the sources for medieval prices) but there's still a level of parity between the two.

Re: Handcrafed items; The prices aren't so high because of the expertise and art value. They are so high because of the hours. Making hide is a stinky, long, and arduous affair. Making enough rawhide for an entire tent will require multiple animals to be hunted, skinned, fleshes, fur stripped, sewn together, oil/rain treated, and finally held together by tent poles.

As for canvas? Canvas would be pretty expensive when you consider they don't have sewing machines. Look at a blanket or piece of clothing. It has thousands and thousands of stitches and places where one thread crosses another, right? Imagine every one of those had to be threaded by hand. Threading the canvas and weaving the wool would make hand-sewing look quick and easy by comparison.

There's a robust market for handcrafting in 2013 (just do a google search for handcrafted furniture). Handcrafting is readily available for many goods and the average crafter doesn't make a whole lot of money. Whatever premium placed on handicraft is going to be a percentage markup on the base, and that base is going to be largely composed of the craftsperson's time.

No one is claiming the D&D price list is spot on, however, given that a few assumptions it is pretty damn good. Especially given the medieval price list I linked to earlier (http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html).

Also, note I am speaking specifically about 3e. The 4e prices seem to be far more whimsical.

TypoNinja

2013-06-20, 12:42 AM

Wow, no one is insulting your apprenticeship, but it still isn't considered formal education. "Formal education" is a specific phrase, and has been one for a very long time, and has referred to the same thing for even longer.

Oh hey look, that page I linked to but you didn't bother reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education#Formal_education_in_the_Middl e_Ages_.28500-1600_AD.29

Anyway, can you guys stop derailing the thread with your semantic difficulties?

At the risk of derailing, thanks Mr Junior Moderator, I dislike inaccurate information, and seek to correct it lest others reading fall into the same quagmire of misinformation as you have. And it is related to the subject at hand because in this context very few people will have used an academic institution, but will have been trained through apprenticeship directly by another skilled in that field. If were discussing the economics of a fictional realm the types of educations readily available is useful information.

You are misusing the word education, specifically conflating any education, with academia, when that isn't always the case.

I read the links you provided, Non-formal and informal learning both have conditions that exclude apprenticeship programs for a craft, that leaves an apprenticeship as part of formal education, it even fits the definition, as any craft you are attempting to learn will have subjects you'll need to demonstrate knowledge of and practical skills you have to show you've mastered.

Informal learning is explicitly not including an instructor, so we definitely are not that.

Non-formal learning is just strange, its all the left over bits, an intermediate step. But it does point out that "continuing professional development" is non-formal. Well that gives us an idea, its for expanding skill sets you have, not learning new ones. We're not that either.

As long as we're throwing Wikipedia references around, the actual page on apprenticeship (why you wouldn't start with that to find out if its formal education or not is a mystery) actually sumarizes the process as

A master craftsman was entitled to employ young people as an inexpensive form of labour in exchange for providing food, lodging and formal training in the craft.

And then proceeds to compare the process to our modern university structure and vocational educations. Which brings me back to my original quip about trade schools.

The medieval practice of an apprenticeship is equivalent to our modern trade schools, or any vocational school that provides training in a skill rather than abstract knowledge. Think Electrician vs Physicist.

By what basis would you say apprenticeship isn't formal learning? Considering the definitions you linked seem to indicate it is.

Kelb_Panthera

2013-06-20, 12:59 AM

I've still shown that people could live into their 70s on a vegetarian diet in the classical period, (well before medieval,) so regardless I don't think your point has been well established. 'That diet will kill you,' is still a statement I don't abide by. Based on what I've seen/read, at most it might kill you a few years sooner. Maybe even not then. So until you show more data, I doubt your conclusion.

You've shown that one significant figure from the classical period lived to a ripe, old age; not that such an occurence was common.

Spuddles;

Hindu and Budhist -monks- were supposedly strict vegetarians. Most of the people of those civilizations, the indo-china region, were believers in those religions but still ate meat whenever it was available* much of the Budhist populace didn't consider fish meat either.

*available as they defined it, which probably did include leaving animals that produced useable byproduct alone. However, animals that were primarily meat animals such as ***** other than the flock's alpha and, in a fairly large proportion of the population, fish were eaten quite regularly. Certainly not as often as in a modern, industrial nation, but easily at least a couple times a month to once or even twice a week with fish.

Spuddles

2013-06-20, 01:35 AM

At the risk of derailing, thanks Mr Junior Moderator, I dislike inaccurate information, and seek to correct it lest others reading fall into the same quagmire of misinformation as you have. And it is related to the subject at hand because in this context very few people will have used an academic institution, but will have been trained through apprenticeship directly by another skilled in that field. If were discussing the economics of a fictional realm the types of educations readily available is useful information.

You are misusing the word education, specifically conflating any education, with academia, when that isn't always the case.

I read the links you provided, Non-formal and informal learning both have conditions that exclude apprenticeship programs for a craft, that leaves an apprenticeship as part of formal education, it even fits the definition, as any craft you are attempting to learn will have subjects you'll need to demonstrate knowledge of and practical skills you have to show you've mastered.

Informal learning is explicitly not including an instructor, so we definitely are not that.

Non-formal learning is just strange, its all the left over bits, an intermediate step. But it does point out that "continuing professional development" is non-formal. Well that gives us an idea, its for expanding skill sets you have, not learning new ones. We're not that either.

As long as we're throwing Wikipedia references around, the actual page on apprenticeship (why you wouldn't start with that to find out if its formal education or not is a mystery) actually sumarizes the process as

And then proceeds to compare the process to our modern university structure and vocational educations. Which brings me back to my original quip about trade schools.

The medieval practice of an apprenticeship is equivalent to our modern trade schools, or any vocational school that provides training in a skill rather than abstract knowledge. Think Electrician vs Physicist.

By what basis would you say apprenticeship isn't formal learning? Considering the definitions you linked seem to indicate it is.

I am not conflating anything with anything; you are. I am differentiating between formal education or formal schooling, which has referred to acadamia since god knows when, and any form of education, vocational or otherwie. Skilled laborers are going to be de facto educated, either on the job, through an apprenticeship, a vocational school, formal education, or some combination there-of. The key word here is FORMAL. Formal means something in this context, it is not an extraneous word.

I have tried to maintain precision in my language in this thread, as academic institutions and formal education produce different professionals than other forms of education and, as you note, the distinction is important. Which is why I am struggling to understand this eagerness to conflate all forms of education when historically, socially, and economically, their differences are important.

Ah yes, a unskilled laborer in contemporary America scrapes by on $50 or so, an unskilled laborer in 12th Century England scrapped by on 1 pence a day. Neither is going to be buying too many luxuries and both are going to have trouble raising a family. There's some differences in costs of things today (you can check out the price list and the sources for medieval prices) but there's still a level of parity between the two.

Median GDP per capita in America is like 29k/year. In medieval Europe, it varied from like 1k to 3k. That's a 10 to 30 fold difference in purchasing parity.

SowZ

2013-06-20, 02:06 AM

Spuddles

2013-06-20, 02:21 AM

You've shown that one significant figure from the classical period lived to a ripe, old age; not that such an occurence was common.

Spuddles;

Hindu and Budhist -monks- were supposedly strict vegetarians. Most of the people of those civilizations, the indo-china region, were believers in those religions but still ate meat whenever it was available* much of the Budhist populace didn't consider fish meat either.

*available as they defined it, which probably did include leaving animals that produced useable byproduct alone. However, animals that were primarily meat animals such as ***** other than the flock's alpha and, in a fairly large proportion of the population, fish were eaten quite regularly. Certainly not as often as in a modern, industrial nation, but easily at least a couple times a month to once or even twice a week with fish.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at. People need far less meat in their diet than you seem to believe. May it reduce their lifespan? Maybe, but most evidence suggests that diets rich in animal fat & protein actually shorten maximum age, through a variety of mechanisms.

In fact, a diet of starches and dairy is sufficient to subsist on rather healthy, if not particularly enjoyably.

Calorie restriction tends to make people smaller, and there's a lot of contemporary evidence that suggests that calorie restriction increases longevity.

One thing plentiful food does offer, though, is security against famine and disease, and over a couple generations, epigenetics kicks in and you get bigger people. Bigger people means more work out of them and they're better able to defend against smaller aggressors.

Animal protein is also very important in building lean muscle mass, so unless there's a good source of alternative protein (whey, soy), those without much meat in their diet will presumably have lower str and potentially con scores.

Waspinator

2013-06-20, 04:38 AM

There's a big issue with trying to use real-life prices of goods as a conversion: rarity is not necessarily constant. For example, gold may be more or less rare in real life compared to Eberron (or whatever) both in terms of how common it is in the ground and how much capacity the mining industry has. Differing levels of technology and possible magical mining methods make it hard to say how much gold exists there. And we can also apply similar arguments to the farming industry, especially in a high-magic setting. If even low level spellcasters exist, they can probably make extremely high quality farming tools beyond the dreams of any real-life medieval farmer. And magical water summoning and purification methods would also have a drastic effect on the availability of clean water, which could have all kinds of economic effects.

Reddish Mage

2013-06-20, 09:40 AM

I'm not really sure what you're getting at. People need far less meat in their diet than you seem to believe. May it reduce their lifespan? Maybe, but most evidence suggests that diets rich in animal fat & protein actually shorten maximum age, through a variety of mechanisms.

In fact, a diet of starches and dairy is sufficient to subsist on rather healthy, if not particularly enjoyably.

Calorie restriction tends to make people smaller, and there's a lot of contemporary evidence that suggests that calorie restriction increases longevity.

One thing plentiful food does offer, though, is security against famine and disease, and over a couple generations, epigenetics kicks in and you get bigger people. Bigger people means more work out of them and they're better able to defend against smaller aggressors.

Animal protein is also very important in building lean muscle mass, so unless there's a good source of alternative protein (whey, soy), those without much meat in their diet will presumably have lower str and potentially con scores.

Er, you are referring to real medieval people right, and their strength and constitution scores? I suppose that works metaphorically, but this side discussion on the relative merits of meat and vegetarianism isn't going to move anywhere unless someone starts linking to some articles.

I would note, regardless of what you say, this has no bearing whatsoever on a D&D game unless you, as a DM, decide to inject it there.

There's a big issue with trying to use real-life prices of goods as a conversion: rarity is not necessarily constant. For example, gold may be more or less rare in real life compared to Eberron (or whatever) both in terms of how common it is in the ground and how much capacity the mining industry has. Differing levels of technology and possible magical mining methods make it hard to say how much gold exists there.

Price of gold isn't especially interesting to me, price of basic goods and services is, and a useful base in $ to price other goods and services is potentially very useful. We have found that a conversion of 1 gold into the hundred's of dollars, price goods at very approximately where they should be (allowing that all goods are handcrafted and anything containing steel will be much more expensive). If we use specifically a value of a silver piece of say $40-60, then the price of labor services, at least of "unskilled" (as described by the DMG/SRD) and "skilled" (again looking at who is pegged by these descriptions in the DMG/SRD to avoid more debate about that) labor that is comparative as well to labor prices in contemporary US. As a bonus, these prices also work with a medieval price list.

We get comparability and we can tell a story about how and why a lot of things differ. I'd say that's pretty damn useful.

And we can also apply similar arguments to the farming industry, especially in a high-magic setting. If even low level spellcasters exist, they can probably make extremely high quality farming tools beyond the dreams of any real-life medieval farmer. And magical water summoning and purification methods would also have a drastic effect on the availability of clean water, which could have all kinds of economic effects.

Low level spell-casters can't make masterwork anything last I checked, and certainly not stuff "beyond the dreams" of anyone. I've only tried to get a dollar value that produces useful prices for goods and services and a story that explains differences. If we are talking about the practical effects of the existence and assuming an economic use of magic, we are now getting into D&D economics of a completely different scale and detail.

In creating the game world a DM might want to ask such questions. What effects does the availability of magic have on the economy? What sort of potentially anachronistic items will I make available? If you really want to get into it, there's a big difference between the medieval patronistic economy, where the nobility and a few wealthy merchant families would control virtually all the wealth, and a post-capitalistic one.

OOTS has a lot of anachronistic elements thrown in helter-skelter and suggests that even common people have lots of experience with magic, adventurers, and other game elements familiar to players. That could explain the cheapness of gold. But Rich clearly doesn't give a wit about any of the things we are talking about, he hasn't even been paying close attention to the price list!

Haley says that a stay in a big city can cost 1000 gold a night tops back in the Miko arc, and that would be in 10's to 100's of thousands $ from our analysis here, but also, looking at the price list, it appears simply impossible to figure out how a tourist can end up spending 1000 gold in a single day in a city.

Deadline

2013-06-20, 10:15 AM

I've still shown that people could live into their 70s on a vegetarian diet in the classical period

You have? I see you stating that Pythagoras was a vegetarian, but with no reference as to when he started or how long he pursued that lifestyle. Doubt my point all you like, you'll have a hard time proving that a diet lacking sufficient protein is good for you (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21872435).

At any rate, I'm not arguing that a person couldn't live on a vegetarian diet in the medieval period. And I'm not saying vegetarianism is bad (I think it's a perfectly valid lifestyle choice). I'm arguing that in medieval Europe, such a life would be short. And I'm not really arguing that, because it's hard to see where such a thing is actually in dispute (you even concede that it "might kill you a few years sooner"!). It's also not the topic of the thread, so feel free to PM me if you want to carry this further for some reason. (And please note that I'm not saying eating meat is particularly healthy for you either. We require certain proteins for proper nutrition, and we don't really have a good way of processing the extra bits we get with those proteins. The human body kinda sucks in regards to that. One way or another, what you eat will probably wind up killing you. :smallbiggrin:)

At any rate, I wanted to pipe up and throw my support behind the idea of using daily wages for unskilled labor as a point of reference for determining the modern value of a D&D gold piece. That seems like it might actually be a better, or more accurate, measure for comparison.

TypoNinja

2013-06-20, 05:22 PM

At any rate, I wanted to pipe up and throw my support behind the idea of using daily wages for unskilled labor as a point of reference for determining the modern value of a D&D gold piece. That seems like it might actually be a better, or more accurate, measure for comparison.

I don't know, that depends on the social development doesn't it? Are unskilled laborer an exploited class who engage in back breaking labor for peanuts, or is there some kind of minimum wage to make sure they get a living wage out of it? Craft guilds were common enough, but would there be a teamsters union? A dock workers guild?

Also the price seems to vary widely, if you base in on the price of flour for example, 1GP seems to be worth about 20$, on the other hand, a whole chicken is 2cp, but runs you about $25 according to a quick google, so one GP is now worth $1250.

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of consistency to the worth of currency once you are not shopping for magic items. I suspect the currency system was designed around what adventurers would do with it, not how the NPC's lived.

dascarletm

2013-06-20, 06:08 PM

I don't think anything is consistent enough to really nail down a set price.

Lets look at social structure. If the richest man in DnD has X gold, and the average middle-class has Y gold, and the average lower class has Z gold. Then lets base that off of what it is for our society. Of course the class structures have different %'s of the wealth then they did/do in medieval times and DnD settings, but it may still serve the purpose of showing you "how rich" your character is in accordance to RL.

Spuddles

2013-06-20, 06:35 PM

I don't know, that depends on the social development doesn't it? Are unskilled laborer an exploited class who engage in back breaking labor for peanuts, or is there some kind of minimum wage to make sure they get a living wage out of it? Craft guilds were common enough, but would there be a teamsters union? A dock workers guild?

Also the price seems to vary widely, if you base in on the price of flour for example, 1GP seems to be worth about 20$, on the other hand, a whole chicken is 2cp, but runs you about $25 according to a quick google, so one GP is now worth $1250.

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of consistency to the worth of currency once you are not shopping for magic items. I suspect the currency system was designed around what adventurers would do with it, not how the NPC's lived.

There's no way a live chicken costs $25 unless you're buying a fancy breed or at a pet store. You can buy a whole chicken at under $1/lb, and a chicken runs 4 or 5 lbs. That is grocery store price, which accounts for transportation and butchery costs. It would be cheaper if you were to buy it straight from a breeder.

A better comparison would be looking at what proportion of day's wage does an item cost.

A D&D unskilled labor can buy 5 lbs of flour after a day of work. A modern minimum wage worker can buy at least 50lbs of flour with a day's wage. So a modern worker is paid 10x as much as one in D&D. Which makes 10sp represent about $5, or 1gp represent $50.

Which is pretty close to other comparisons people have made.

Is that math right? Did I math right, guys.

TheStranger

2013-06-20, 07:11 PM

A better comparison would be looking at what proportion of day's wage does an item cost.

A D&D unskilled labor can buy 5 lbs of flour after a day of work. A modern minimum wage worker can buy at least 50lbs of flour with a day's wage. So a modern worker is paid 10x as much as one in D&D. Which makes 10sp represent about $5, or 1gp represent $50.

That is actually a pretty good way of getting at it. Again, I would average several common staple goods or services; the kind of things a commoner might actually buy regularly. For instance, your unskilled hireling would have to work for 3 days to buy half a pound of meat, while a modern worker could buy somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 lbs. a day - that's a 60x multiplier.

Also, I don't know that this perfectly accounts for relative scarcity; as has been noted, the price of bread varies greatly across the U.S., which is going to screw up your multiplier since we're all using the same dollar. But again, you can smooth that out by averaging a bunch of prices rather than using a single item.

SowZ

2013-06-20, 07:14 PM

TypoNinja

2013-06-20, 08:49 PM

If you are buying a pet hen meant to be purchased one at a time or a decent rooster, maybe. An average chicken bought wholesale is about two dollars. Less if you get a bulk deal because they cost pennies to feed and take inches to raise. Which is consistent with a gold piece as a hundred dollars.

I profess no knowledge of chicken breeding, I googled the price of a chicken and took my first result, if you've experience with the subject I'll take your word for it.

big teej

2013-06-20, 09:18 PM

I seem to recall seeing this discussed at length at some point, and if I thought I could find the link to it in any amount of time, I would do so...

but it boiled down to something like A list celebrities making 200 gp a month.

I could be misremembering however.

Phelix-Mu

2013-06-20, 09:19 PM

If you could put a gold piece into a $ amount how much would it be worth?

What would be a typical middle class annual salary? How much gold would be considered "rich."

The real problem is that the value of $ is not fixed. Modern currency is all relative, and the way the gold market has been for the last 5 years or so, gold is not much better.

In short, gold is worth a lot. 1gp is 1/50th of a lbs of gold. No matter what the gold exchange rate is today, one pound of gold is worth quite a bit. Ten pounds of gold, a pretty substantial bar, is worth a small fortune, and is only 500gp. Higher-level adventurers deal in amounts of gold that would rival millionaires and billionaires, the kind of money that exceeds the yearly proceeds of entire small countries.

So basically, we see that gold is like the Franklin to the poor man's Lincoln. If you are going around handing out gold pieces to waitresses for tips, you are stacked. It'd be like leaving someone a $50 tip for a one-person lunch and not blinking an eye.

Anything more accurate is frankly only going to be accurate for awhile, and the value of gold irl is so far divorced from $ value that it's hardly meaningful to do a precise conversion. Someone quoted the official WotC answer; a quick look shows that the dollar value of gold has almost tripled since that answer was given in '06.:smallamused:

All the other talk about the accuracy of wage earning is totally extrapolating of a system that is self-admittedly a massive simplification. Not to mention that D&D isn't even internally consistent with it's economics, as 10' ladders and firewood can attest. And then add a realistic level of magic in economic production...well, it all just goes to hell. A single Wiz20 could bork the world economy so hard in any D&D setting that gold would be used to make toilet seats.:smallwink:

Reddish Mage

2013-06-21, 11:57 AM

All the other talk about the accuracy of wage earning is totally extrapolating of a system that is self-admittedly a massive simplification. Not to mention that D&D isn't even internally consistent with it's economics, as 10' ladders and firewood can attest. And then add a realistic level of magic in economic production...well, it all just goes to hell. A single Wiz20 could bork the world economy so hard in any D&D setting that gold would be used to make toilet seats.:smallwink:

10' ladders are more expensive then firewood as they should be, I don't see the internal inconsistency. Are they listed with two prices or something?

Currency fluctuations will mean any answer given in modern currency will change, so what? Get a historical dollar chart and it'll keep the price up to date more or less (which is the standard of accuracy we have adopted)

I don't consider the modern price of gold a particularly good index for the value of a gp, though it happens to put the gold piece in the hundreds of dollars, which does happen to jive with what I take to be the more popular of the two options everyone who has taken a position has taken (Either gp is 10's of $s or its 100's of $s). Modern currency is only one way to find a value to a gold piece.

Unless you have an answer about what ordinary people in D&D make and what they can buy, you have nothing to compare the PCs to. It'll quickly become apparent the poverty of your knowledge should your PCs actually get involved in scenarios that have them spending significant time and investment in a civilized area. I've been in plenty of game like that. Most DMs I know have had to make made up numbers on the fly for unlisted items and answers to what non-adventurers people can afford, and the results been all over the map.

I'd like to avoid charging PCs 30gp for a common remedy at an herbalist, and I'd like to know whether an typical town merchant can afford to hire 3rd level adventurers, or only highly successful merchants in large cities.

As for magic, I believe the standard D&D assumption is that magic is an economic side-show, rather than a cornerstone. I would note that the wizard spells, in particular, are not especially geared towards economic gain. If that doesn't seem "realistic" to you, by all means figure out how magic changes everything. Your example of a single 20th level wizard though could change everything doesn't mean anything though. Assuming one COULD (and I think examples of which would be problematic), why WOULD a wizard choose to do so?

Also, when you start getting into real macroeconomics rather than answering a few questions about prices and wages and being satisfied with a rough answer, you have to take a look at the whole picture. SO maybe there's all this treasure being created by high level wizards (mechanism unknown) but its being hoarded up by dragons. So assuming some wizard doesn't go and kill 20% of the world's dragon population....

Lets look at social structure. If the richest man in DnD has X gold, and the average middle-class has Y gold, and the average lower class has Z gold. Then lets base that off of what it is for our society. Of course the class structures have different %'s of the wealth then they did/do in medieval times and DnD settings, but it may still serve the purpose of showing you "how rich" your character is in accordance to RL.

If by this you mean there's a meaningful figure of wealth by saying a rich man in D&D has, say, a net worth of 100,000 gold. The average middle-class person has a net worth of 1000gp and a poor person would only be able to scrap together a dozen gold out of all his/her's possessions. That would be highly meaningful.

I don't think speaking about the very richest man is meaningful, now we are into emperors, adventurers, and, assuming by man you mean a male human, possibly a bard with a dragon girlfriend.

hamishspence

2013-06-21, 12:19 PM

10' ladders are more expensive then firewood as they should be, I don't see the internal inconsistency. Are they listed with two prices or something?

A ten ft ladder is 5 copper, a ten ft pole is 2 silver- so people buy the ladder, chop it in half, and sell the two poles. Even if you're only getting half price, it's still big profit.

Reddish Mage

2013-06-21, 12:50 PM

A ten ft ladder is 5 copper, a ten ft pole is 2 silver- so people buy the ladder, chop it in half, and sell the two poles. Even if you're only getting half price, it's still big profit.

Ah yes, I think someone in my gaming group suggested doing to raise money quick once (it was shot down by the DM). So, technically, that makes the price list absurd as you can make unlimited profits by buying ladders and taking them apart...assuming the prices and the DM doesn't adjust to your tinkering. Of course, when these absurdities crop up in the real world, they only last when its hard to exploit the inconsistency (So once I read the stock of a technological-subsidiary of larger company was valued at many times the combined company, its absurd but no one actually bought out the parent company just to get at the parent's stock in their subsidiary).

SowZ

2013-06-21, 03:03 PM

I profess no knowledge of chicken breeding, I googled the price of a chicken and took my first result, if you've experience with the subject I'll take your word for it.

No firsthand experience. My brother and I looked it up once, though. It was a few years ago, though. So would defer to someone else's expertise. 25 dollars is sure to be a per chicken or maybe decent rooster, though. As someone else pointed out, chicken meat is cheap in the store.

dascarletm

2013-06-21, 03:11 PM

No firsthand experience. My brother and I looked it up once, though. It was a few years ago, though. So would defer to someone else's expertise. 25 dollars is sure to be a per chicken or maybe decent rooster, though. As someone else pointed out, chicken meat is cheap in the store.

My sister raises chickens. The price varies based on the breed of chicken as well as their family line. Of course since DnD isn't a chicken raising simulator it is just extrapolated to be simple.

SowZ

2013-06-21, 03:16 PM

My sister raises chickens. The price varies based on the breed of chicken as well as their family line. Of course since DnD isn't a chicken raising simulator it is just extrapolated to be simple.

Oh, cool. So what would you say a chicken bred to be eaten is worth? Like, 1-3 USD?

dascarletm

2013-06-21, 03:55 PM

Oh, cool. So what would you say a chicken bred to be eaten is worth? Like, 1-3 USD?

Without asking her (she goes for eggs) I'd guess around that. They feed them mostly their surplus food from their home, and buy certain vegetables en bulk for them. The biggest loss is that some chicken breeds require a lot of attention to hatch, and/or die in the process. I'll ask her what she would estimate.

Phelix-Mu

2013-06-21, 04:48 PM

As for magic, I believe the standard D&D assumption is that magic is an economic side-show, rather than a cornerstone. I would note that the wizard spells, in particular, are not especially geared towards economic gain. If that doesn't seem "realistic" to you, by all means figure out how magic changes everything. Your example of a single 20th level wizard though could change everything doesn't mean anything though. Assuming one COULD (and I think examples of which would be problematic), why WOULD a wizard choose to do so?

More appropriately, given a setting in which Wiz20 has existed before in significant numbers, one of them would, due to the simple and universally true equation of

MONEY=POWER

Now, the exact efficiency of this equation varies heavily, but owning resources and being able to buy out your enemy's allies with you daily earning, well, it's entirely likely that at some point in history a wizard decided that fabricate and a couple months of spells would be just as effective as fireballing his/her enemies into nonexistence.

As to if magic can unbalance the economy, know that in any higher op game, magic can and often does do this. Why should a wizard spend down time reading at the library when there are tens of thousands of gp worth of profit waiting to be made every day. Fabricate, wall of iron/stone/salt, water to acid, and that's not even counting if a DM allows the wizard player to sell spells (not advised). Spells are a daily resource that renew with minimal effort (effort the wizard was going to make anyway), so a wizard with time is a wizard with money.

The same is true about druids and clerics, though to a somewhat lesser extent, and these are less useful points of argument because these classes more often correlate to the kind of moral baggage that is going to put a stopper on the money-tree project. Wizards want more magical power by the common stereotype, and money is a fine way to achieve this (and perhaps more efficient given the enemy-accumulation that results from excessive blasty-blasty).

So, back to the issue of what normal people make: arbitrary. Because economics in D&D have NO resemblance to any historical period, and because pricing of items can and should be made more consistent by DMs (remember the ladder trick...DMs can and probably should prevent such nonsense by changing prices), there is no meaningful analogy between real life and D&D beyond the arbitrary resemblance established by the setting.

To demonstrate. If there is a village, relatively poor, where there is a herbalist, and this herbalist sells cures that are unlisted. How much should the DM charge as a fair price for an average cure of some kind? It should be no more than should supply the herbalist with an amount of money commensurate with the herbalist remaining in her current economic strata. If the cure represents a 1/4 of a days work by the herbalist, determine the herbalists ranks in Profession(herbalist), and then the earning amount per day, then divide by four. Now, and this is important, decide if the arrived at amount makes sense. If this amount means the herbalist would have long ago earned enough money to upgrade her/his shop, move to a bigger town, or otherwise have significantly changed lifestyle, then this isn't an appropriate price (barring the herbalist having some non-economic motivation for staying in town or spending money on something aside from their individual welfare).

Basically, I hesitate to estimate any earning power of the commoners in absolute terms. Why? Because the internal economics of D&D is arbitrary and inconsistent. A DM can fix this, or a DM can ignore the problem. Both approaches will cause headaches.

If a DM wants to fix it, the DM should first figure out why the suggested level of magic that exists in D&D has not elevated society above the faux medieval flavor of the setting. There are plenty of reasons why this might be (monsters rampaging destroy value, rapacious taxation, gods directly remove wealth donated to their churches from the world or compel wealth sacrifices that destroy valuables, hoarding dragons, etc). But any such reason should be socially reflected (widespread paranoia/xenophobia, rebellious peasants, atheists, and dragonslayers, respectively), and have meaningful impact on the setting to avoid the kind of "because that's the way it is" thing that the core ruleset occasionally has going on.

Spuddles

2013-06-21, 04:53 PM

Because economics in D&D have NO resemblance to any historical period

In the course of this thread, I've found that, given the general prices in the PHB given for common goods, and the amount of wealth generated by untrained & professional laborers, matches pretty closely (1x to 5x difference) with what mean per capita GDP looked like in the Middle East and Europe from about 1100-1400.

Whew what a run on sentence.

Of course, as you rightly put out, once you add Fabricate, or a trap of Create Food, or Wall of Salt or Wall of Iron, you end up with a huge surplus of goods on a level with an industrial economy.

And let's not forget what dedicated disciples of economics can do (clerics of Abadar, I'm looking your way) with removal of transportation costs. Oh, and divinations make producers HUGELY influential. Speculation isn't a dirty word, because you know that next year will be a bad crop- time to start importing grain.

Lightlawbliss

2013-06-21, 05:31 PM

...
And let's not forget what dedicated disciples of economics can do (clerics of Abadar, I'm looking your way) with removal of transportation costs. Oh, and divinations make producers HUGELY influential. Speculation isn't a dirty word, because you know that next year will be a bad crop- time to start importing grain.

what spell can tell you anything about the harvest of grain next year? last I checked, even gods wouldn't know that.

Spuddles

2013-06-21, 05:45 PM

what spell can tell you anything about the harvest of grain next year? last I checked, even gods wouldn't know that.

Contact Other Plane.

Phelix-Mu

2013-06-21, 05:47 PM

Chronos

2013-06-21, 05:51 PM

Point the first: Forget about any notion of precious metals being stable in value. The usual argument is to declare that they're stable by definition and that it's just everything else varying, but even such a begging of the question isn't self-consistent. The ratio of value of gold to silver, or either to platinum, has varied all over the place, and that's without even mentioning precious metals like aluminum. Now, you can certainly use a precious metal as one measure of value, but you'd be well-advised to average it with a bunch of other measures.

Point the second: Yes, protein is necessary for good health, and yes, there are very few plants which provide complete protein. That doesn't matter, because there are plenty of combinations of plants that, together, provide complete proteins, and those combinations of plants form the staple diets of cultures all over the world. Rice and beans, for instance, will together meet all of your protein needs for a few dimes a day. Now, you also need vitamins, and some of the B vitamins are found only in animal products and fungi, so a completely vegan diet would be deadly in pre-modern times, but all you need to take care of that is a little milk or eggs.

Point the third: Some items in the rule books are, in fact, horrendously overpriced (the ten-foot pole that costs more than a ladder is a prime example of this). Most of those overpriced items, though, are things that are commonly purchased by adventurers, and so are subject to horrible inflation due to adventurers being filthy stinking rich. If you restrict yourself to items that commoners would deal with regularly and which adventurers don't usually bother with, like flour, beer, and chickens, you'll find that the prices are much more consistent (not perfectly so, but then we wouldn't expect them to be).

Spuddles

2013-06-21, 05:57 PM

While you might liken the individual earning power of a given commoner to some kind of average commoner in real life, it's the representation of the system as a whole that does not make sense. Economics is, as I'm sure you're aware, about much more than individual wages.

In a sense, the problem is that the rules set up two coexisting but non-overlapping economies; the economy where normal people live and do normal, fairly mundane stuff, and the economy where high-level PCs and NPCs could single-handedly change the lives of tens of thousands of people with a few days worth of effort, let alone just blow tons of money on stuff, or worse yet, give away money to others. In a logical game, however, these economies should probably overlap, and the vast power cap of the core rules should somehow impact the lives of others (like good-aligned Clerics20 of god of agriculture ending the occurrence of bad crops and drought on the continent).

It's not that unrealistic.

In the pseudo-feudal, anarcho-capitalist system of D&D, the separate economies make sense, and, depending on which points you match, even work in a historical setting. Unskilled labor's purchasing power with respect to flour, salt, or chickens, or purchasing mundane weapons & armor.

Knights & kings, both in D&D and IRL, have/had enormous relative wealth because they controlled most of the production. That means, in D&D, plate armor requires the economic output of 15,000 unskilled commoner-days of labor.

An F-22 raptor (without armament) costs $150 million to build. That is over 2.3 million minimum wage-days of labor. Adding weapon systems would add another $77 million.

If you don't think there's an entire economy out there that you will never be a part of and will never have more than the marginalist of marginal impacts, you're really not aware of how much purchasing power governments & billionaires have.

Instead of having a state redistributing wealth to an industrial-military complex for tanks & planes & thermonuclear devices, in D&D you have obscenely powerful entities dealing in souls, golems, and magic swords.

Phelix-Mu

2013-06-21, 06:16 PM

It's not that unrealistic.

In the pseudo-feudal, anarcho-capitalist system of D&D, the separate economies make that sense, even if you sort of match it up with a historical setting.

Knights & kings, both in D&D and IRL, have/had enormous relative wealth because they controlled most of the production. That means, in D&D, plate armor requires the economic output of 15,000 unskilled commoner-days of labor.

An F-22 raptor (without armament) costs $150 million to build, and that's without its weapon systems. That is over 2.3 million minimum wage-days of labor.

If you don't think there's an entire economy out there that you will never be a part of and will never have more than the marginalist of marginal impacts, you're really not aware of how much purchasing power governments & billionaires have.

Instead of having a state redistributing wealth to an industrial-military complex for tanks & planes, in D&D you have obscenely powerful entities dealing in souls, golems, and magic swords.

Hmm, well I still think the math doesn't quite mesh. For instance, a King could, and probably does, allow high-level adventurers to operate within his realm for some kind of license fee, a tax, or somesuch. The king can afford some enforcers, and at least some of the adventurers (the Lawful ones, among others) will opt to just pay the king. The king stands to make more money from this than from half of the quotas and levies against his lesser lords, knights, and those peasants. While the king could be greedy, he might just as likely stop taxing peasants, and rest on the laurels of contented masses while regularly hitting up his level 15+ homies for spending cash. Or the king could just hire some wizards and start his own item sweatshop, and restrict the sale of items by other spellcasters by law.

So, I will concede that the king/lord/peasant thing does seem to resemble real life in some respects. Sale of those staples of real life are fairly similar to real life. But then there is that table with the cost of spellbooks, price per spell cast by npc, and those other tables that show maximum level of npc by class by population size. And that's just faceless npcs that the setting assumes are present. Lord McJohnson the Dragonslayer was a famous knight, and he's decided that no thorp in the land shall be without a stone wall about it and Warriors4 to guard it while his line endures. And he's got the Platinum Visa to back it up. His lady friend, Amadulanya the Fair, a high-level cleric of beauty and fertility has hired a corps of acolytes and decanters of endless water to ensure that knowledge of farming, midwives, and irrigation be spread throughout the land. Every day she generates wealth with her supply of spells, and being the rich and beneficent lady that she is, she spreads it around.

Of course, evil npcs will likewise consume and destroy with great abandon, but due to the bias of the setting, the DM has to drop the hammer on the anvil pretty hard to counteract the change that small groups of powerful individuals can have on the world.

I guess in a sense it's not totally unlike super-rich billionaires spreading philanthropy about, but that's not a purely economic mechanism. Unlike magic, which is just like advanced production methods, but in many respects, worse.

Reddish Mage

2013-06-21, 11:18 PM

It's not that unrealistic.

In the pseudo-feudal, anarcho-capitalist system of D&D, the separate economies make sense, and, depending on which points you match, even work in a historical setting. Unskilled labor's purchasing power with respect to flour, salt, or chickens, or purchasing mundane weapons & armor.

Knights & kings, both in D&D and IRL, have/had enormous relative wealth because they controlled most of the production. That means, in D&D, plate armor requires the economic output of 15,000 unskilled commoner-days of labor.

An F-22 raptor (without armament) costs $150 million to build. That is over 2.3 million minimum wage-days of labor. Adding weapon systems would add another $77 million.

If you don't think there's an entire economy out there that you will never be a part of and will never have more than the marginalist of marginal impacts, you're really not aware of how much purchasing power governments & billionaires have.

Instead of having a state redistributing wealth to an industrial-military complex for tanks & planes & thermonuclear devices, in D&D you have obscenely powerful entities dealing in souls, golems, and magic swords.

I've seen estimates of Plate armor of various sorts varying from the a couple 100k to into the millions (though say a piece substantially above a million would be for a King or a Prince).

Actually the purchasing power of billionaires is a fascinating study, and fictional portrayals tend to be off widely.

Next time you see some fiction ask yourself why do the wealthy people eat at overly-large tables and live in houses with rooms that are way too large? Simple, because the fiction writers often have no clue and are perpetuating a fiction of how rich people live. Its also why fairytale princesses spin wool, churn butter, and so on but the results are magical since nobility are so much better and more beautiful then the common-folk (in these stories, since common-folk storytellers couldn't actually conceive of life with servants to handle every whim but did buy in the story that nobility were better than they were).

Of course, in a D&D game, high level adventurers clearly rival this kind of wealth, and that makes it relevant to think about how people of this wealth level live in your game.

Reddish Mage

2013-06-21, 11:39 PM

In the course of this thread, I've found that, given the general prices in the PHB given for common goods, and the amount of wealth generated by untrained & professional laborers, matches pretty closely (1x to 5x difference) with what mean per capita GDP looked like in the Middle East and Europe from about 1100-1400.

That's what I found fascinating about comparing D&D pricing to that of real world Mediaeval sources.

While you might liken the individual earning power of a given commoner to some kind of average commoner in real life, it's the representation of the system as a whole that does not make sense. Economics is, as I'm sure you're aware, about much more than individual wages.

STOP RIGHT THERE! Everything thing you have to say Phelix, everything you are bringing up about magic, D&D economy as a whole, and the super-rich are very nice to think about, but you are using words like "in a logical game" or "you have to" consider things facts. NO, we get to decide individually to what extent prices, services, and the value of gold will make sense in our games, and how detailed we want it to be. There's no obligations here. I would say its very interesting to speculate what a theoretically consistent D&D macroeconomy would look like, but I could then charge you with making an ecologically consistent gaming world (after all D&D worlds have way too many large predators! And, if you know something about basic ecology, a handful of such predators would destabilize a whole ecosystem!).

No matter how detailed you make your game model, it will be incomplete. The economics will also lead to questions about the legal framework, and the sophistication of the financial industry...and that's just sticking to economics.

In a sense, the problem is that the rules set up two coexisting but non-overlapping economies; the economy where normal people live and do normal, fairly mundane stuff, and the economy where high-level PCs and NPCs could single-handedly change the lives of tens of thousands of people with a few days worth of effort, let alone just blow tons of money on stuff, or worse yet, give away money to others. In a logical game, however, these economies should probably overlap, and the vast power cap of the core rules should somehow impact the lives of others (like good-aligned Clerics20 of god of agriculture ending the occurrence of bad crops and drought on the continent).

By all means feel free to figure out how these things might work, I would be interested in adding these elements to my gaming world. Still, I've only heard very vague things said, largely along the lines that these things should [bad word] completely upend the economy.

Some of your other posts flesh this out a bit more, and I'd like to comment about those things individually.

Reddish Mage

2013-06-22, 12:10 AM

King could tax 15-level+ adventurers and take care of the entire Kingdom's finances!

I note this assumes there is a steady supply of 15th level adventurers in the Kingdom or the entire world. I'm not sure about where the King would get the enforcers you suggested. 15th level is already "living legend" type material, a party that level can take on Epic level threats, you know like they do in a certain webcomic.

So, I will concede that the king/lord/peasant thing does seem to resemble real life in some respects...[so long as no one screws with it by being high-level, rich, and desirous to do the screwing]

Awesome!

Lord McJohnson the Dragonslayer and His lady friend, Amadulanya the Fair, a high-level cleric of beauty and fertility spread huge amounts of wealth and knowledge, specifically stone walls, decanters of endless water, and knowledge of farming, midwives, and irrigation....[ Which unless, stopped by villains will lead to amazing changes!]

I guess in a sense it's not totally unlike super-rich billionaires spreading philanthropy about, but that's not a purely economic mechanism. Unlike magic, which is just like advanced production methods, but in many respects, worse.

You did offer a mechanism to counteract the change to the economy there in the villains, but I'm not sure farming, irrigation or midwifery was lacking in the D&D-verse to begin with. I certainly don't think this is the same scale as the industrial revolution caused by a few high level spell-casters and their low-level acolytes. What I wonder is, assuming prosperity spreads through the land, how does that effect things economically? Does food become practically free? Does that make craft cheaper, because they are fewer farmers and more craftspersons? We are missing the most important parts to this story. Recall the economic effects of an action can be unpredictable and needs to be though through (a food surplus will result in poorer farmers and overtime mean more craftspeople, unless the craftspeople have banded into guilds and increased the cost of profession entry to keep prices artificially high...).

SowZ

2013-06-22, 12:14 AM

I note this assumes there is a steady supply of 15th level adventurers in the Kingdom or the entire world. I'm not sure about where the King would get the enforcers you suggested. 15th level is already "living legend" type material, a party that level can take on Epic level threats, you know like they do in a certain webcomic.

Awesome!

You did offer a mechanism to counteract the change to the economy there in the villains, but I'm not sure farming, irrigation or midwifery was lacking in the D&D-verse to begin with. I certainly don't think this is the same scale as the industrial revolution caused by a few high level spell-casters and their low-level acolytes. What I wonder is, assuming prosperity spreads through the land, how does that effect things economically? Does food become practically free? Does that make craft cheaper, because they are fewer farmers and more craftspersons? We are missing the most important parts to this story. Recall the economic effects of an action can be unpredictable and needs to be though through (a food surplus will result in poorer farmers and overtime mean more craftspeople, unless the craftspeople have banded into guilds and increased the cost of profession entry to keep prices artificially high...).

Also, what about when the 15th level adventurers say, "Screw you, no. You should pay US to not take over the kingdom but instead save you and everyone else's lives every few years." What's he gonna do? They are the strongest people in the country.

TypoNinja

2013-06-22, 12:42 AM

I've seen estimates of Plate armor of various sorts varying from the a couple 100k to into the millions (though say a piece substantially above a million would be for a King or a Prince).

Actually the purchasing power of billionaires is a fascinating study, and fictional portrayals tend to be off widely.

Next time you see some fiction ask yourself why do the wealthy people eat at overly-large tables and live in houses with rooms that are way too large? Simple, because the fiction writers often have no clue and are perpetuating a fiction of how rich people live. Its also why fairytale princesses spin wool, churn butter, and so on but the results are magical since nobility are so much better and more beautiful then the common-folk (in these stories, since common-folk storytellers couldn't actually conceive of life with servants to handle every whim but did buy in the story that nobility were better than they were).

Of course, in a D&D game, high level adventurers clearly rival this kind of wealth, and that makes it relevant to think about how people of this wealth level live in your game.

This actually brings up an interesting disparity between real life billionaires and adventuring parties.

In real life billionaires are bad for the economy, while they have an income and worth many hundreds or thousands of times greater than the average person they don't consume thousands of times more of any given product. You can only eat so much chocolate no matter how decadent you are. This leads to stagnation of a market because we want a flow of wealth, not an accumulation. Any time money stops doing something and just accumulates its bad.

In D&D however the stratospheric levels of wealth PC's accumulate are actually fairly fluid, you rake in obscene levels of wealth, but spend it again almost as fast.

Spuddles

2013-06-22, 02:19 AM

This actually brings up an interesting disparity between real life billionaires and adventuring parties.

In real life billionaires are bad for the economy, while they have an income and worth many hundreds or thousands of times greater than the average person they don't consume thousands of times more of any given product. You can only eat so much chocolate no matter how decadent you are. This leads to stagnation of a market because we want a flow of wealth, not an accumulation. Any time money stops doing something and just accumulates its bad.

In D&D however the stratospheric levels of wealth PC's accumulate are actually fairly fluid, you rake in obscene levels of wealth, but spend it again almost as fast.

A fighter's +5 weapon is worth 500,000 commoner days of labor. Adventurer wealth is pretty stagnant, especially all the tomes & and +6 trinkets they accumulate.

The value of the items is in the evil creatures they use it to slay and nefarious plots they foil.

Likewise, a billionaire's wealth doesn't just sit there, it's constantly lended out and used as venture capital. People like Warren Buffet have done exceedingly well taking money and making more money with it, and in the process adding huge amounts of wealth to the economy by restructuring businesses to turn a profit (generate wealth).

Money in a bank account doesnt just sit there, it gets loaned out in the form of house loans, business loans, new cars, etc.

CRtwenty

2013-06-22, 02:33 AM

Also, what about when the 15th level adventurers say, "Screw you, no. You should pay US to not take over the kingdom but instead save you and everyone else's lives every few years." What's he gonna do? They are the strongest people in the country.

Then they get pegged as Evil Overlords and have to deal with every upstart young group of Good Aligned Heroes trying to take them out. Also other rival countries would probably invade on principle during their attempt causing a good ol world war scenario.

Tarquin explains why it's a bad idea here. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0758.html)

Kelb_Panthera

2013-06-22, 02:34 AM

Contact Other Plane.

Just.... No.

Sorry for the off-topic but this is one of my pet-peeves.

Contact other plane's ability to divine future events is predicated on the fact that the creatures contacted have knowledge of future events. The only creatures in D&D that explicitly have certain knowledge of future events are greater deities. Elemental wierds have enough information gathering and processing muscle, through their prescience ability, to have a reasonable chance of extrapolating future events.

If you use CoP to contact a greater deity that deity can give you very accurate information about anything concerning his portfolios that will happen in the next 16-20 weeks. (on-topic: this is long enough for a deity of nature or agriculture to give info that would be enormously useful in the agricultural-business market). Even then, there's a 12% chance that the deity will mislead you, intentionally or not.

Divinations are unquestionably powerful. The value of information is such that they may even bear consideration as the most powerful of spells; but they -can't- tell you everything there is to know.

Spuddles

2013-06-22, 04:04 AM

Tetsubo 57

2013-06-22, 04:35 AM

Well, 1 gp also gets you 50' of hemp rope which can go for about $50 irl....so D&D world has expensive rope? :smallconfused:

It is when it is braided by hand.

Reddish Mage

2013-06-22, 09:42 AM

This actually brings up an interesting disparity between real life billionaires and adventuring parties.

In real life billionaires are bad for the economy, while they have an income and worth many hundreds or thousands of times greater than the average person they don't consume thousands of times more of any given product. You can only eat so much chocolate no matter how decadent you are. This leads to stagnation of a market because we want a flow of wealth, not an accumulation. Any time money stops doing something and just accumulates its bad.

In D&D however the stratospheric levels of wealth PC's accumulate are actually fairly fluid, you rake in obscene levels of wealth, but spend it again almost as fast.

I would dispute that billionaires are bad for the economy, since all that unspent money is mainly in productive assets (mostly businesses, especially when the money is in risky private equity), but I this level of economic discussion is getting way beyond us. I would think adventurers, like the billionaires the way you imagine them, cannot spend their money on anything common people would buy. All that magical equipment the adventurers are snapping up is the equivalent of yachts and private jets and rare art objects, its an economy the common people don't participate in. In this case it is very fewer as there are very few high level spell-casters and collectors of such objects, far fewer than real life people in the highest level of luxury market.

Phelix-Mu

2013-06-22, 11:33 AM

All that magical equipment the adventurers are snapping up is the equivalent of yachts and private jets and rare art objects, its an economy the common people don't participate in. In this case it is very fewer as there are very few high level spell-casters and collectors of such objects, far fewer than real life people in the highest level of luxury market.

But no one forces powerful adventurers to spend money this way. Single characters with VoP or a non-mechanical inclination to be charitable can donate tens and hundreds of thousands of gp to improving the cause of normal people. Given the inclinations of many heroes (interest in protecting the world or saving people...not everyone is this way, but it accounts for a fair number), this can be a substantial power in the world.

A friend played a VoP cleric that dabbled as a surgeon in his spare time. He joined an affiliation of doctors interested in improving public health, and over the course of his career founded about a dozen hospitals, equipping each with items allowing magical and mundane healing at a level and scale previously unimagined (Stronghold Builder's Guidebook has some real gems for hospitals).

An enterprising cleric without VoP could probably have accomplished just as much, though would have required more money for keeping their items up to snuff.

Many powerful organizations feature high level npcs as their leaders. I'm unclear if it's just published settings or it's in fact all core settings where there are a fairly large number of powerful people, but they definitely seem to be around.

Money = Power. Power = Money. There are more of both in D&D than in the real world, possibly excepting the richest of the rich and the total gross value of the world. Magic makes valuable stuff out of nothing, something useful and profitable. While villains with a taste for economic mayhem surely exist, they need to be quite aggressive to forestall the forward progress that magic makes possible.

SowZ

2013-06-22, 12:06 PM

Then they get pegged as Evil Overlords and have to deal with every upstart young group of Good Aligned Heroes trying to take them out. Also other rival countries would probably invade on principle during their attempt causing a good ol world war scenario.

Tarquin explains why it's a bad idea here. (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0758.html)

I'm not suggesting the heroes actually take over the continent. I'm not even saying they need to extort money. But if the king threatens to tax them, they could just refuse with a counter threat. What's the king going to do?

If they still travel about doing good and have saved the world multiple times and all they are doing is refusing to give the king, (whose life they've probably saved a couple times,) a cut? I doubt good adventurers would try to hunt them down. If anything, the king should be weary to keep them happy since the people likely love the adventurers. Making a rebellion a serious possibility.

Phelix-Mu

2013-06-22, 12:28 PM

If anything, the king should be weary to keep them happy since the people likely love the adventurers. Making a rebellion a serious possibility.

Or the people see the heroes as bad omens in whose wake destruction inexplicably follows. Remember, the split historically is about 50/50. We love our heroes, right until they stop helping us and we get back to our little lives. Then, they are just as human and fallible as us, and we're likely to believe any slander or bad rumours that float around about them. The only thing people like more than elevating heroes is watching them fall; modern culture is hardly the first example of this, but it's a truism.

In short, the reason a king is a better leader and is more likely to get his way is because he's the leader and he gets his way. The adventurers saved the world, but if the adventurers don't respect the gods or the political powers that be, then they will have their image suffer the same as anyone else. Some adventurers might be up to politicking with the king, but they lack traditional law and the institutions surrounding the king's office to back them up. Yes, they can probably point an ICBM at the king's archmage and tell him to *bleep* off, but only so much flippancy and disrespect is likely to be tolerated. Maybe the king can't really threaten the PCs, but he can probably make their lives a bit more difficult (exile, bounties, archons/inevitables sent after the party to harass the party members).

I dunno. It depends on the setting and the power level. In my world, kings of sizable countries can muster quite a bit of muscle. In FR, there are some pretty powerful wizards and clerics backing up many of the monarchies, or the countries are straight up run by wizards.

A heavily pc-centric world never really did it for me, and I like a more historical scope to the power level of my world. Did the pcs save the world? Sure. Were they the first? Nope. Does that really even make them that special? Depends on what we mean by special, but only certain people will even care, and others are just as likely to demonize the adventurers for whatever reason. Other retired and semi-retired adventurers abound, and every large city has formidable people among its populace (though surely not all of them give a damn).

As I said before, I believe that magic-level is where the faux medieval thing begins to be less believable. If a given setting in your game wants to stick to this flavor, I'd advise there being a reason why various elements of Tippy-verse or other hyperbolic uses of magic haven't percolated down into normal life.

Tetsubo 57

2013-06-22, 02:22 PM

I would dispute that billionaires are bad for the economy, since all that unspent money is mainly in productive assets (mostly businesses, especially when the money is in risky private equity), but I this level of economic discussion is getting way beyond us. I would think adventurers, like the billionaires the way you imagine them, cannot spend their money on anything common people would buy. All that magical equipment the adventurers are snapping up is the equivalent of yachts and private jets and rare art objects, its an economy the common people don't participate in. In this case it is very fewer as there are very few high level spell-casters and collectors of such objects, far fewer than real life people in the highest level of luxury market.

Not to derail this thread but real world billionaires don't do that. They tend to plunk those billions into accounts and just sit on them. The 1% has *trillions* of dollars doing nothing to help the world. At least adventures are pumping money back into the economy via purchasing magic items, services, land or titles.

Reddish Mage

2013-06-22, 02:39 PM

Or the people see the heroes as bad omens in whose wake destruction inexplicably follows. Remember, the split historically is about 50/50. We love our heroes, right until they stop helping us and we get back to our little lives. Then, they are just as human and fallible as us, and we're likely to believe any slander or bad rumours that float around about them. The only thing people like more than elevating heroes is watching them fall; modern culture is hardly the first example of this, but it's a truism.

I think towards the end of the creative campaigning 2e book mentions various economics and political issues that might impact the group if I can remember it correctly. This book comes up with a figure of 8-12 gold as the annual (disposable?) income of a typical peasant and notes very little of it is in actual money. It also suggests image problems adventurers should be on the watch for when dealing with a common folk that are totally divorced from their lives, and also brings up the notion of a King may want to collect taxes. It'd make a good read if that bit was up anywhere.

A heavily pc-centric world never really did it for me, and I like a more historical scope to the power level of my world. Did the pcs save the world? Sure. Were they the first? Nope. Does that really even make them that special? Depends on what we mean by special, but only certain people will even care, and others are just as likely to demonize the adventurers for whatever reason. Other retired and semi-retired adventurers abound, and every large city has formidable people among its populace (though surely not all of them give a damn).

That's your choice in designing your world. The SRD does suggest that most large cities has someone capable of at least casting 5th-6th level spells and the few metropolises (if the Kingdom has one of those) would most likely have someone that could cast 7th-8th. That tells you a lot about the availability of folk with PC-class levels as a Kingdom with a couple of large cities will only have a handful or two 15th-level types (not necessarily adventurers!). Whether the king has any in his employ is another thing entirely.

As I said before, I believe that magic-level is where the faux medieval thing begins to be less believable. If a given setting in your game wants to stick to this flavor, I'd advise there being a reason why various elements of Tippy-verse or other hyperbolic uses of magic haven't percolated down into normal life.

This reminds me of the part of "Elan and the Beanstalk" in SSDT where Elan makes his climb checks and Roy criticizes it as unbelievable even if the beanstalk is an easy climb. Your assuming that it is inevitable that this philanthropic spell-caster arises and I've yet to hear how this spell-caster will transform the economy. Not only that, but that it HAS to be a regular occurrence, in every Kingdom! (You are telling me that it radically transforms the whole faux-medieval economy.)

I keep asking, what specific change would you make? Would you radically alter the price lists? Would gold be cheaper or more expensive? Its would be nice to create a civilization where magic changes everything, but unless you make an attempt to flesh it out at this point your not adding more to the discussion, your just...what exactly? Casting dispersions on the absurdity of the standard D&D faux-medieval setting? For what purpose exactly?

Spuddles

2013-06-22, 04:13 PM

Not to derail this thread but real world billionaires don't do that. They tend to plunk those billions into accounts and just sit on them. The 1% has *trillions* of dollars doing nothing to help the world. At least adventures are pumping money back into the economy via purchasing magic items, services, land or titles.

You understand that the money in a bank account is fluid and being lent out, right? It doesn't just "sit there". The bank actively loans it out. The next time you take out a loan, you're actually spending someone else's money.

Reddish Mage has it right about how much high lvl adventurers impact the peasant economy- they really dont.

Troll around for high level builds on these forums. Of the tens of thousands of gold pieces spent on equipment, less than 100gp will be spent on mundane items the average npc is capable of producing.

Magic items are made by high level pc classes for high level pc classes. Then the items either sit in a bag of holding or get sold to a lower level adventurer. The items in and of themselves, and the associated gp, have no impact on the silver economy.

There should really be three economic tiers in dnd- silver, gold, and soul.

Silver is if you aren't an adventurer. Gold is if you are an adventurer or over level 3 and specialized. Soul is if you are a pit fiend or a level 16 character whose actions have planar ramifications.

Phelix-Mu

2013-06-22, 04:20 PM

You understand that the money in a bank account is fluid and being lent out, right? It doesn't just "sit there". The bank actively loans it out. The next time you take out a loan, you're actually spending someone else's money.

Reddish Mage has it right about how much high lvl adventurers impact the peasant economy- they really dont.

Troll around for high level builds on these forums. Of the tens of thousands of gold pieces spent on equipment, less than 100gp will be spent on mundane items the average npc is capable of producing.

Magic items are made by high level pc classes for high level pc classes. Then the items either sit in a bag of holding or get sold to a lower level adventurer. The items in and of themselves, and the associated gp, have no impact on the silver economy.

There should really be three economic tiers in dnd- silver, gold, and soul.

Silver is if you aren't an adventurer. Gold is if you are an adventurer or over level 3 and specialized. Soul is if you are a pit fiend or a level 16 character whose actions have planar ramifications.

I guess I can see your position, but you have just made two arguments that seem at odds. Billionaires do impact irl economy. Adventurers don't impact the in-game economy.

Now, I know you weren't making a comparison, but one or two other people seemed to be making similar arguments.

Is the in-game economy for peasants like the real-world economy or not? Because if billionaires in the real-world do impact things, then there must be some reason that pcs don't similarly impact things in th peasant economy, if for no other reason than trickle-down economics (regardless of if that is a thing or not).

I'm just trying to understand your position here.

hamishspence

2013-06-22, 04:23 PM

Rice and beans, for instance, will together meet all of your protein needs for a few dimes a day. Now, you also need vitamins, and some of the B vitamins are found only in animal products and fungi, so a completely vegan diet would be deadly in pre-modern times, but all you need to take care of that is a little milk or eggs.

Environment may be important here. Tundra-dwellers, for example, are not going to be getting rice and beans easily.

Phelix-Mu

2013-06-22, 04:29 PM

Environment may be important here. Tundra-dwellers, for example, are not going to be getting rice and beans easily.

Similarly they may lack access to many ways to meaningfully use Craft/Profession to personal gain (no wood, no surplus bone floating around since everyone uses it for stuff, no hotel/mansion to be a maid in). Some of it is cultural, of course, but many environments alter the cultural elements that the game assumes are present.

On the other hand, high-level casters with energy transformation fields can affect even remote communities. Tree tokens are expensive, but can produce a fairly considerable quantity of wood in a region where trees don't grow naturally.

Spuddles

2013-06-22, 04:30 PM

I guess I can see your position, but you have just made two arguments that seem at odds. Billionaires do impact irl economy. Adventurers don't impact the in-game economy.

Now, I know you weren't making a comparison, but one or two other people seemed to be making similar arguments.

Is the in-game economy for peasants like the real-world economy or not? Because if billionaires in the real-world do impact things, then there must be some reason that pcs don't similarly impact things in th peasant economy, if for no other reason than trickle-down economics (regardless of if that is a thing or not).

I'm just trying to understand your position here.

Billionaires in the real world have a much greater impact on lower economic positions because their actions end up creating labor demand, capital demand, and liquidity demand that commoners can actually meet. At the very least, capital depreciation & labor demand means capitalists will always be spending some amouny of their wealth.

Demand for a +3 sword (or +1 flaming shocking if you like to "optimize") can only be met by what, a 6th level caster? A tome of int needs a 17th level caster. And, judging by the fact that popular dming doesnt use rust monsters, sunder, disjunction, or anything that might make a PC feel bad, there's very little capital depreciation. Other than consumables, but those are all magic.

The only place for trickle down to occur is outside of the rules- magic ingredients. Can you farm the magic lichen that makes a healing potion? Do you have to get the pinions of a pheonix for a flaming sword or scroll of fireball?

Who knows, isnt covered in the rules.

In my games, I rule that magical materials can be produced. It makes commoners soooo much more valuable.

Phelix-Mu

2013-06-22, 04:48 PM

Billionaires in the real world have a much greater impact on lower economic positions because their actions end up creating labor demand, capital demand, and liquidity demand that commoners can actually meet. At the very least, capital depreciation & labor demand means capitalists will always be spending some amouny of their wealth.

Demand for a +3 sword (or +1 flaming shocking if you like to "optimize") can only be met by what, a 6th level caster? A tome of int needs a 17th level caster. And, judging by the fact that popular dming doesnt use rust monsters, sunder, disjunction, or anything that might make a PC feel bad, there's very little capital depreciation. Other than consumables, but those are all magic.

This sounds pretty cogent. I still feel that if there is enough time/people for Magic=Free Money to become widespread, then it will trickle down. Spellcasters easily acquire resources that outstrip what they need to own CR-appropriate encounters. Extra resources are spent on luxuries, castles, nice roads, or just thrown at waitresses that have fine posteriors.

My world is quite large and has a great many members of long-lived species. It's not particularly high-magic, but the most powerful creatures are quite ridiculously powerful. Some of them will be interested in the welfare of others, statistically speaking, and will toss considerable resources in the direction of improving lifestyles and such.

Similar things do seem to happen in established settings, too. Silverymoon, Thay, the ancient courts of Myth Drannor, and Netheril, all have a level of magic that generally improves the lives of everyone. Netheril went wrong, but mostly due to a few fools overshooting their own limitations rather spectacularly. Even sans mythals, there are ways to generate powerful magic at low cost (energy transformation field, I'm looking at you).

Anyway, I'm rambling on here, a bit. I find that you all have a pretty good argument, and have me at least half convinced of your position.