On Commoner Mortality

[Red Regent]

On good old Earth, humans don’t have a single natural predator. The Monster Manuals, on the other hand, add a startling number. It’s a common adage that an adventurer has a great salary, but a terrible retirement plan. On the other hand, Joe Commoner isn’t without his fair share of danger, from massive Phase Spiders literally popping out of nowhere to hunt, to random fanatics with the Death Devotion feat who think the world needs a few more wights, to entire societies (Drow, Aboleth, Mind Flayer) filled with people smarter than you and constantly working towards your own society’s destruction.

So what are the most frequent/deadly types of danger your typical commoner may need to survive? What sort of lifespan should be expected? How justified is it when three characters in a party all have the tragic background of “my village was destroyed when I was a child”? How do these things differ depending on your campaign setting – specifically, between Greyhawk, Faerûn, and Eberron?

Please assume a setting that runs as described in the Dungeon Master’s guide and/or a typical adventure module, not a Tippyverse.

[flappeercraft]

I would expect the commoner mortality rate to be pretty high in more rural areas although less so in urban areas. Probably I would say no more than 50 years would be the life expectancy of a regular commoner in your average village.

[Bakkan]

In my homebrew campaign world, such monster attacks are very rare. Most commoners go their whole life without seeing a griffon or a ghost. Monster attacks are the sort of thing that the PC's get hired to investigate. This, combined with the relatively easy access to magical healing, means that even in rural areas the average lifespan is pretty close to that in reality.

That said, I believe in letting players define their characters as much as possible, and so if three of them say their villages were attacked, then I'll just say something about statistical clustering and move on.

[Mechalich]

On good old Earth, humans don’t have a single natural predator. The Monster Manuals, on the other hand, add a startling number. It’s a common adage that an adventurer has a great salary, but a terrible retirement plan. On the other hand, Joe Commoner isn’t without his fair share of danger, from massive Phase Spiders literally popping out of nowhere to hunt, to random fanatics with the Death Devotion feat who think the world needs a few more wights, to entire societies (Drow, Aboleth, Mind Flayer) filled with people smarter than you and constantly working towards your own society’s destruction.

So what are the most frequent/deadly types of danger your typical commoner may need to survive? What sort of lifespan should be expected? How justified is it when three characters in a party all have the tragic background of “my village was destroyed when I was a child”? How do these things differ depending on your campaign setting – specifically, between Greyhawk, Faerûn, and Eberron?

Please assume a setting that runs as described in the Dungeon Master’s guide and/or a typical adventure module, not a Tippyverse.

For the record, the setting described in the DMG evolves naturally into the Tippyverse without fiat-based limitations imposed from without. Anyway, presuming said limitations exist (let's say the gods command all high-level casters to spend 95% of their time staring at the wall or something), life as a commoner in a D&D reality is actually much less dangerous than it was in actual pre-industrial Earth, because healing magic exists.

Wounds are largely minor setbacks, any injury that doesn't result in outright loss of a limb is fixed by a quick trip to the local divine caster. Many common sources of acute death, such as childbirth or skull fractures simply cease to exist. Disease is also eminently curable, though it may require a trek to a slightly larger town. Chronic diseases are pretty much eliminated - you can kiss cancer goodbye - and even acute diseases that cause epidemics are quickly isolated and possibly exterminated completely. Smallpox, which used to kill a disgustingly high percentage of all humans, is largely a non-factor in D&D worlds.

Natural predators may be more dangerous, and include monsters that are considerably more intelligent, and this no doubt increases commoner mortality via violence by a significant margin, but it is still almost certainly an order of magnitude less than the mortality reduction caused by the near elimination of disease, especially when you consider that any predator that becomes overly aggressive and kills too often will be subject to the same kind of man-eater hunts that were used on leopards, lions, and tigers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

[OldTrees1]

Depends on how you build your world.

In my campaign world there are 4 sections of note (capital city, lesser cities, borders, colonies).
Capital City: Nobody is born here. Some die trying to get access. Once inside there is almost no risk of death by monster. Murder is a more common cause of death.

Lesser Cities: Lower than normal death by monster rates. A monster might attack a city once a decade. Individual commoner chance of death: 1% chance per decade? Early onset old age is a more common cause of death.

Border Cities: These are your typical D&D cities settled near a monster filled wilderness. However they also have a large garrison. Expect several monster attacks per year, but only one breach per decade. 5% chance of death per decade?

Colonies: Villages of people settling inside monster infested lands and too far away to call for help. No NPC remains a commoner and lives through a decade.

So 0%, 1%, 5%, and 100% death rate (due to monsters) per decade for Commoners.

[Yahzi]

So what are the most frequent/deadly types of danger your typical commoner may need to survive?
What matters most is the one they don't have to face: infant mortality. Thanks to Cure Minor Wounds (an orison!) no one dies in childbirth. Thanks to Remove Disease there are no plagues. Thanks to Plant Growth there are no famines. Consequently all those monsters are required to keep the population in check. :smallbiggrin:

[Kyberwulf]

I don't say all monsters target humans exclusively. There are other creatures out there in the woods. Goblins target other creatures other then humans. Elves patrol the woods serves to keep it safe for elves, but humans to by proxy. Animals have learned that humans are a dangerous creature to stir up, much like bees or hornets. In the end I think it equals out to a normal mortality rate to the past.

[Nupo]

In a D&D world the same thing will limit life span that limited it on earth during the middle ages, disease. To hire someone to cast Remove Disease cost 150 gp. and the average commoner earns 1 sp. per day. That is more than four years wages!

[Pugwampy]

Sure theres more monsters that want to nosh you or sacrifice your virgin daughters and of course Smaug who is hiding in a mountain where for some reason people chose to build a river town next to him ?

On the flip side you have very easy access to healing and raise dead spells which cost a cleric no more then a prayer so even one gold coin is pure profit making prices very reasonable to any class. Lets not forget those living saints who do it for free .

If you are Joe commoner who has a steady income and lives close to a temple ,saving up a nest egg to fund an adventuring party to rescue your virgin daughter from that once in a blue moon kidnap , I expect a pretty long and healthy life.

[JustIgnoreMe]

On good old Earth, humans don’t have a single natural predator.
*citation needed*

Here's an article about everything on good old Earth that eats humans (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-eater).

We've got rid of most predators from the places where we live: that doesn't stop polar bears, crocodiles, alligators and tigers from finding us tasty.

[Godskook]

In a D&D world the same thing will limit life span that limited it on earth during the middle ages, disease. To hire someone to cast Remove Disease cost 150 gp. and the average commoner earns 1 sp. per day. That is more than four years wages!

Try again

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?443776-D-amp-D-Commoners-Make-Plenty-of-Money

[Pyromancer999]

On the flip side you have very easy access to healing and raise dead spells which cost a cleric no more then a prayer so even one gold coin is pure profit making prices very reasonable to any class. Lets not forget those living saints who do it for free .

Raise Dead has a 5,000 gp component cost, so definitely not free. This also enforces a limit on how many can be brought back this way by even the most charitable. It is also a 5th level spell, and I don't think many rural areas(the likely targets of random monster attacks) are exactly littered with level 9+ Clerics. Also, clerics don't have all the spell slots on the world, so there is a limit. Plus, RP-wise, spells are a blessing from their deity, so not exactly something most would give away cheaply.

Mechanics-wise, there is the standard hireling cost assumed.


If you are Joe commoner who has a steady income and lives close to a temple ,saving up a nest egg to fund an adventuring party to rescue your virgin daughter from that once in a blue moon kidnap , I expect a pretty long and healthy life.

As previously mentioned, commoners make 1 sp a day. That's about 36.5 gp a year, which is definitely not enough to afford much, even if living expenses were 0.

[Nupo]

Try again

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?443776-D-amp-D-Commoners-Make-Plenty-of-Money

Interesting bit of fantasy there, but I guess this is a game set in a fantasy world. I wonder if the person that put that together has ever put together an actual family budget. There were a ton of expenses that were left out. That thread also makes a lot of bold assumptions, the biggest of which is assuming that if someone has skills, he or she will be able to make an appropriate amount of money relative to those skills. I know a lot of people with college degrees that are working at minimum wage jobs. I expect in any world, fantasy or not, similar situations would also exist.

I still say (even with some creative accounting) the average commoner would not have access to third level spells. Rich merchants, yes, the average commoner no.

[Chronikoce]

Try again

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?443776-D-amp-D-Commoners-Make-Plenty-of-Money

This always bothered me as it assumes: no taxes or payments to any local lord, a year round growing season allowing income every week all year, and ignores the time/cost/risk involved during the process of transporting the produce grown to a market to be sold (and that's being generous and assuming he dumps his entire stock on a single buyer and doesn't have to spend any time selling his food)

[Doug Lampert]

This always bothered me as it assumes: no taxes or payments to any local lord, a year round growing season allowing income every week all year, and ignores the time/cost/risk involved during the process of transporting the produce grown to a market to be sold (and that's being generous and assuming he dumps his entire stock on a single buyer and doesn't have to spend any time selling his food)

An adventurer with those skill bonuses on a craft skill is assumed able to walk into town as a total stranger and NET that much per week. He has all those expenses and extra time requirements and DOES NOT get as good a return as a local in any sane economy. Those incomes are the AFTER whatever nets. That's how they are listed.

The PHB is rules for adventurers, and an adventurer makes 8.5 GP a week if he shows up and wants to work for one week with the same skills as a no ability bonus level 1 commoner. The commoner WILL do better because he's a reliable long term worker, rather than one small step up from a day laborer.

Unskilled is what you pay a 12 year old to babysit your infant or a grandmother to watch the fire and make sure it doesn't burn the house down while you are working, it has nothing to do with an actual skilled worker (and for that matter craft is usable untrained, so it has nothing to do with someone who's responsible and reliable enough to work in a smithy even if they have no actual training as a smith).

[Chronikoce]

An adventurer with those skill bonuses on a craft skill is assumed able to walk into town as a total stranger and NET that much per week.

This still entirely ignores a year round growing season and that distance (and difficulty) from farm to market can vary greatly by region.

It also ignores any downtime/damage due to storms, illness, animal attacks, etc. Then there is the ability of a market to actual purchase the crops grown with cash as opposed to bartering for goods. Depending on the region and the world it may be more likely that goods are bartered for goods and services and only a portion of the profits are payed for with actual cash.

I've also never seen a justification for why a divine spellcasters would choose to ignore the spellcasting services charge as outlined in the rules (sure some examples may exist that hand out casting for free but those should be the exception since rules exist for buying spellcasting) which means every single orison costs 5gp and the costs only go up from there.

[Beowulf DW]

Colonies: Villages of people settling inside monster infested lands and too far away to call for help. No NPC remains a commoner and lives through a decade.

So 0%, 1%, 5%, and 100% death rate (due to monsters) per decade for Commoners.

Who grows all the food in your setting if the farmers can barely make through a decade? I'm not being snarky, here, I'm genuinely curious about the mechanics of your setting.

[Gemini476]

Interesting bit of fantasy there, but I guess this is a game set in a fantasy world. I wonder if the person that put that together has ever put together an actual family budget. There were a ton of expenses that were left out. That thread also makes a lot of bold assumptions, the biggest of which is assuming that if someone has skills, he or she will be able to make an appropriate amount of money relative to those skills. I know a lot of people with college degrees that are working at minimum wage jobs. I expect in any world, fantasy or not, similar situations would also exist.

I still say (even with some creative accounting) the average commoner would not have access to third level spells. Rich merchants, yes, the average commoner no.

It's mainly just a refutation of the standard assumed hireling costs - 1sp/day for an untrained hireling[1], 1sp/day for "poor" meals[2], and taxes/tithes of up to 20%[3] are three numbers that really shouldn't coexist.

That the DMG tries to justify it[4] somehow just calls attention to it and makes it worse, really.

The only way I can see to make everything go together is the good old AD&D 1E explanation:

Your character will most probably be adventuring in an area where money is plentiful. Think of the situation as similar to Alaskan boom towns during the gold rush days, when eggs sold for one dollar each and mining tools sold for $20, $50, and $100 or more! Costs in the adventuring area are distorted because of the law of supply and demand-the supply of coin is high, while supplies of equipment for adventurers are in great demand.
In other words, literal goldrush prices.

...In case you wonder, yes, the 1sp/day price is straight out of the 1E DMG - bearers and torchbearers cost that much. A "merchant's meal" is also 1sp, but that's not exactly what you're linkboy is getting (which is presumably cheap enough that your thousands-of-gold-pieces PCs don't need to know the prices - their rations are bought for 50sp a week!).

This is a case where the added detail just makes older ad-hoc prices look really weird.

[1] PHB p.132: "The amount shown is the typical daily wage for laborers, porters, cooks, maids, and other menial workers." (The DMG p.105 also includes barristers in this price class, and mercenaries and valets/lackeys both sit at 2sp/day - between trained and untrained price classes.)

[2] PHB p.131: "Poor meals might be composed of bread, baked turnips, onions, and water." (PHB p.129 gives bread as being 2cp/loaf - turnips and onions aren't even in the Arms & Equipment Guide, however.)

[3] DMG p.140: "Taxes paid to the queen, the emperor, or the local baroness might consume as much as one-fifth of a character’s wealth[.]" (The same page also gives tithes as being 10%, of course, but those are called out as optional except in tyrannic theocracies. 20% is also given as an upper limit on taxes.)

[4] DMG p.139:

The economic system in the D&D game is based on the silver piece (sp). A common laborer earns 1 sp a day. That’s just enough to allow his family to survive, assuming that this income is supplemented with food his family grows to eat, homemade clothing, and a reliance on self-sufficiency for most tasks (personal grooming, health, animal tending, and so on).

[Necroticplague]

It depends on the logistics of your world, and the distributions of levels. In my own, it's roughly what you'd expect from real-life, because the larger amount of things that could hunt down people are compensated for by the survivors being tougher and more experienced. Children get XP for helping their parents fend off threats, until they're somewhere in the 9-11 range by they set off on their own. Since more people are high enough level to make magic items, enchanted equipment to take care of some of the more common problems is more readily available (i.e, Ghost Touch Clubs for 'in case of Shadows'). Even in case of emergency, somebody probably knows enough to get a Sending out

Meanwhile, if you use the DMG guidelines for populations, incredibly high. Wights and Zombies kill much of the population in one touch, so most rural places are one unlucky night away from being an undead-infested ghost town. Traditional methods of defence (high walls and similar fortifications) offer no defence against things that can move through walls, climb over them, burrow under them, or fly above them, while still being strong enough to get you. All of which exist in plentiful amounts in DnD. Since their's so much danger, you'd expect that populations would need to become very clustered, so as to easily defend each other. The typical 'rural community', as we know it, can't exist in a stable configuration normally.


Who grows all the food in your setting if the farmers can barely make through a decade? I'm not being snarky, here, I'm genuinely curious about the mechanics of your setting.

Well, two possible solutions I can see:
1. Farming isn't done by people who live too far away to get help. After all, too far to get help is also too far to practically sell one's goods on a regular basis (or buy things you need).
2. Even if it was in 'colonies', note the quoted text says 'remains a commoner'. Like my above points, frequent run-ins with monsters means that those that live in those kinds of areas would level up, presumably taking non-commoner levels to survive.

[Chronikoce]

My world is broken into different regions. Cities surrounded by smaller towns out to rural edges. These are all protected from years of concerted effort to eradicate dangers. Adventurers would have little work in these regions unless they want to engage in intrigue, politics, or solving normal crimes.

Then as you move further away there are Frontier regions as you describe where life is a constant struggle against the beasts that haven't been eradicated. This is where adventures occur. These towns are also supported by caravans and supplies from the cities as it is too dangerous for a lone family to be off farming on their own.

[Red Regent]

A lot of people seem to think that mortality would be reduced by the presence of the Remove Disease spell, but even given the optimistic levels of salary listed in the linked thread, an entire family can barely afford the 150 GP price of a single casting each year - a family of four productive members.

Furthermore, according to the DMG community tables, a lot of settlements simply aren't going to have a fifth level cleric (and definitely not an eighth level adept) capable of casting the spell. It's impossible in Thorps and Hamlets, which make up 30% of all settlements, and unlikely in Villages and Small Towns, which make up another 40%.

If your town doesn't have this caster, you'll need to brave the road for a trip to a larger settlement. A large town has, at most, three clerics of fifth level or higher and one adept of eighth level or higher healing over 2000 people. This leaves them very busy, and if a plague hits large numbers of people at once, they will not be able to heal everyone, even if they spend most of their time sleeping to recover spells.

The DMG rules for random community generation are not perfect, of course, but I'm trying to follow the stated setting as closely as posssible.

On another note, thanks for all the input. This has been very helpful.

[Beowulf DW]

Well, two possible solutions I can see:
1. Farming isn't done by people who live too far away to get help. After all, too far to get help is also too far to practically sell one's goods on a regular basis (or buy things you need).
2. Even if it was in 'colonies', note the quoted text says 'remains a commoner'. Like my above points, frequent run-ins with monsters means that those that live in those kinds of areas would level up, presumably taking non-commoner levels to survive.

An excellent point, and it actually reminds me of a peculiarity of humanity's place in our world's food chain. I remember reading a bit of conjecture that, although there are many creatures that are more than happy to eat humans when they find them, they are mostly located in areas where humans have not traditionally chosen to live in large numbers (various extreme environments and isolated locales). This is because the predators that live in places where humans like to live have all either been killed, or scared into submission (hence why many animals avoid humans as a rule).

Once our species perfected the tools and techniques to hunt, there suddenly was nothing on this planet that we couldn't kill. As an example, look at the various wolf hunts that occurred all the way into the early modern period in Europe. Wolf attacks periodically became a major problem until the humans in the area went off to drive out or kill the wolves, which caused the wolves that survived to learn to fear humans and to avoid them.

This same principle could apply to the creatures of D&D and Pathfinder: Many humans are weak and make for easy prey, but make enough of a nuisance out of yourself, and they will kill you. Indeed, the standard monster hunt quest may unwittingly have been inspired by our species history of hunting down the predators that try to kill us.

[Gildedragon]

Hmmm. That's probably how "heroes" start out.
A dire bear or young dragon or necromancer been preying too rapaciously on an area. A team forms to take it out

Oooh. That's a good campaign start:
A town watchman, an itinerant priest, a wizard apprentice out on fieldwork, and a thief sentenced to community service, all in same town, get rid of a monster nest that's gotten too dangerous and has let beasts even wander into the town proper.

[Necroticplague]

An excellent point, and it actually reminds me of a peculiarity of humanity's place in our world's food chain. I remember reading a bit of conjecture that, although there are many creatures that are more than happy to eat humans when they find them, they are mostly located in areas where humans have not traditionally chosen to live in large numbers (various extreme environments and isolated locales). This is because the predators that live in places where humans like to live have all either been killed, or scared into submission (hence why many animals avoid humans as a rule).

Once our species perfected the tools and techniques to hunt, there suddenly was nothing on this planet that we couldn't kill. As an example, look at the various wolf hunts that occurred all the way into the early modern period in Europe. Wolf attacks periodically became a major problem until the humans in the area went off to drive out or kill the wolves, which caused the wolves that survived to learn to fear humans and to avoid them.

This same principle could apply to the creatures of D&D and Pathfinder: Many humans are weak and make for easy prey, but make enough of a nuisance out of yourself, and they will kill you. Indeed, the standard monster hunt quest may unwittingly have been inspired by our species history of hunting down the predators that try to kill us.

Somewhat problem with adding this analogy to the world of DnD is that reality gives us the crown of being the sapients with greatest manipulative abilities. That's what can make us threatening. However, in DnD, you can hardly throw a stone without hitting something that's also a sapient manipulator, and well as generally malevolent. Our ability to bring trouble comes from communication abilities (which some similar sapients also do), and ability to manipulate things with hands. Plenty of DnD classic nasties have both of these, and other abilities besides (wights, for example, have both+darkvision, negative levels, and indefatigueability)

[Gemini476]

A lot of people seem to think that mortality would be reduced by the presence of the Remove Disease spell, but even given the optimistic levels of salary listed in the linked thread, an entire family can barely afford the 150 GP price of a single casting each year - a family of four productive members.

Furthermore, according to the DMG community tables, a lot of settlements simply aren't going to have a fifth level cleric (and definitely not an eighth level adept) capable of casting the spell. It's impossible in Thorps and Hamlets, which make up 30% of all settlements, and unlikely in Villages and Small Towns, which make up another 40%.

If your town doesn't have this caster, you'll need to brave the road for a trip to a larger settlement. A large town has, at most, three clerics of fifth level or higher and one adept of eighth level or higher healing over 2000 people. This leaves them very busy, and if a plague hits large numbers of people at once, they will not be able to heal everyone, even if they spend most of their time sleeping to recover spells.

The DMG rules for random community generation are not perfect, of course, but I'm trying to follow the stated setting as closely as posssible.

On another note, thanks for all the input. This has been very helpful.

A correction: 5% of thorps/hamlets have a +10 modifier to the level of the highest-level Druid and Ranger, so level 1d6+7 or 8 for Druids and 1d3+7 or 8 for Rangers.

That's a level 8-13 Druid and level 8-11 Ranger - and the Druid being level 9+ (5/6th chance) means that there's also two more level 5+ Druids.
Also, 11th-level Rangers can cast Remove Disease if they've got 16 Wis - unfortunately unlikely here, since the random NPC Rangers (DMG p.121) have a starting score of 12 Wis and don't get a +2 Periapt of Wisdom until level 14.

That's just a technicality, though - they're so uncommon (and so expensive!) that you're really just better off going to a Village (pop 401+, 1/6th chance of 5th-level Cleric), Small Town (pop 901+, 1/3rd chance), or Large Town (2,001+, 5/6th chance - 1/6th chance of having three!). Do note that in the Small Town you could also buy a Scroll of Cure Disease, but it costs more than double the spellcasting service (375gp vs. 150gp!). You'd better hope for charity!


For as much as spellcasting is world-warping, the density of classed NPCs isn't really large enough to make a noticeable dent against big stuff. Except in the really big cities, but even then they're helpless to help the greater masses unless they start mass-producing expensive Wands of Remove Disease or something.


Fortunately, disease is unlikely to kill too many commoners - the only core diseases that cause Con damage are Demon Fever (caused by Night Hags, unlikely), Slimy Doom (no mentioned disease vector beyond "touching a victim of Slimy Doom"), Mummy Rot (again, unlikely) and Filth Fever.
Filth Fever is probably the most likely one for Commoners to die from - it's an injury disease spread by dire rats and filth in general - but it's also just DC12 for 1d3 DEX/1d3 CON, so you've got a 33% chance of not being badly hurt at all and will survive for probably ten days on average - and that's ten days to make two 45% rolls in a row.

Slimy Doom is probably the one most likely cause a deadly plague, though - it's got some Ebola-like aspects to it, and is really nasty. It's just somewhat unlikely to show up in the first place, I feel? Like, the one that you'll probably see mass outbreaks of the most is Blinding Sickness, since it spreads through tainted water, but it paralyzes and blinds you rather than actively killing you.

...Once you go outside Core things change up a bit - Deathsong in the Book of Vile Darkness is particularly rough, killing a commoner in three days - but since most of the diseases out there are focused on monsters rather than, y'know, actual ones? Yeah, D&D is surprisingly lenient on commoners here. There aren't even stats for the flu, let alone leprosy or tuberculosis or ebola.

And, of course, most of these plagues are most likely to occur in highly populated areas, like cities - the places that are most equipped to handle them (the unlikely max-level-casters Metropolis has 472 daily castings of Remove Disease!)

[Gildedragon]

One could see notable kings and rulers commissioning traps or schemas or suchlike of remove disease or purify food and drink; the latter put into wells of their region.
The duties of a mayor might be every morning, at the break of dawn, activating the device to cleanse the settlement's water for the day.

Expensive but comparable to building cathedrals, or commissioning gilded reliquaries or suchlike.

As magic items don't seem to degrade, these cleanwater stones/buckets would slowly acrete in towns.

Ditto healing traps in temples...
Thinking about how relics and miraculous images work in the real world and oftentimes they have one sticking a hand through a little hole... Perfect trap triggering form.

It would only take a couple clerics getting together to build a trap of true resurrection to have a place become a great metropolis based off the defeat of death.

Townships would sponsor a person 1/decade to take bits of bone from their untimely dead to this sanctuary and chuck them into the trap...

This would be a particularly good move in worlds where gods need belief to live.
The amount of gratitude and trust this would cause would propel whatever God sponsored this Resurrection trap to Greater Deity status.

And again this doesn't need to happen all the time. But once every elven generation would mean these things would acrete in the world.

[Beowulf DW]

Somewhat problem with adding this analogy to the world of DnD is that reality gives us the crown of being the sapients with greatest manipulative abilities. That's what can make us threatening. However, in DnD, you can hardly throw a stone without hitting something that's also a sapient manipulator, and well as generally malevolent. Our ability to bring trouble comes from communication abilities (which some similar sapients also do), and ability to manipulate things with hands. Plenty of DnD classic nasties have both of these, and other abilities besides (wights, for example, have both+darkvision, negative levels, and indefatigueability)

True, but even then, humans tend to be rather clever relative to the other races, considering the implications of starting ages for the classes. It takes an elf more than a century to become a wizard, but a human can manage that in a fraction of the time. Humans are fast on the uptake.

[OldTrees1]

Who grows all the food in your setting if the farmers can barely make through a decade? I'm not being snarky, here, I'm genuinely curious about the mechanics of your setting.

In the colonies? Fighters, Clerics, Rogues, Experts, Adepts, the lucky Warrior, Rangers, Wizards, Sorcerors, ...

Basically the farmer's primary job becomes "Fight to farm" and thus they are better described as militia that farms than as farmers than are part of the militia. The good news is that some monsters can be eaten and thus those attacks can supplement what can be harvested.

The leaders of the Empire noticed that highly lethal environments bring out some secret ingredient needed for the magic item economy. When someone gains enough renown in the colonies they are invited to the capital.


In the capital? All food is imported from the other cities. If there are any commoners that gain entrance, they are no longer farming.

In the other cities? Commoners (only a 1%-5% chance of death per decade from the forced/freeman labor).

[Fizban]

Once you hit city size there are enough high level NPCs that only an army with an equal number of high level NPCs, a thousand year old dragon, or a loose high level fiend can threaten it.

Most of the "maneating" monsters are restricted in living space. Many undead are powerless in or just don't like the sunlight, and thus stay in their ruins or underground. Aboleths live in underground waterways. Mind Flayers live underground. And on and on. Furthermore, there's something in dnd we don't have in real life: cattle-tier humanoids. That is, kobolds and goblins which are fully functioning humanoid races which grow twice as fast as humans (6 years for kobolds), and hey look they often live underground as well. So the maneating monsters mostly live underground and have easy access to less well developed cultures of food sources that grow faster than the more well defended surface dwelling humans. These two problems could be seen as sorting themselves out: the humans (and dwarves and elves) aren't overrun because goblin and kobold populations are kept down by predation.

[SirNibbles]

"Most people in the world at large die from pestilence, accidents, infections, or violence before getting to venerable age. - Player's Handbook,
page 109

Don't get too caught up in external enemies that you forget internal enemies. Quite a large number of people might die from fighting duels and the like. A critical whack over the head with a bottle in a pub brawl could lead to death. Falling from a tree/ladder/roof could lead to death. Being arrested and executed could lead to death, or you could die in prison due to hunger and disease. Freezing weather. Drought. Starvation.

There are plenty of ways to kill commoners that don't require tentacles and claws.

[Gemini476]

Are there even any non-monster diseases out there beyond the ones in the DMG and Book of Vile Darkness?

[Necroticplague]

Are there even any non-monster diseases out there beyond the ones in the DMG and Book of Vile Darkness?

IIRC, one of the Psionics books has diseases that mostly effect psionicists. Like Cascade Fever, which makes you start novaing until you're out of PP.

[Pugwampy]

As previously mentioned, commoners make 1 sp a day. That's about 36.5 gp a year, which is definitely not enough to afford much, even if living expenses were 0.

I am pretty sure a merchant or money lender make much more than that .
In my rules I have common folk who work for a living make between 10 - 30 gp per month .

[Beowulf DW]

In the colonies? Fighters, Clerics, Rogues, Experts, Adepts, the lucky Warrior, Rangers, Wizards, Sorcerors, ...

Basically the farmer's primary job becomes "Fight to farm" and thus they are better described as militia that farms than as farmers than are part of the militia. The good news is that some monsters can be eaten and thus those attacks can supplement what can be harvested.

The leaders of the Empire noticed that highly lethal environments bring out some secret ingredient needed for the magic item economy. When someone gains enough renown in the colonies they are invited to the capital.


In the capital? All food is imported from the other cities. If there are any commoners that gain entrance, they are no longer farming.

In the other cities? Commoners (only a 1%-5% chance of death per decade from the forced/freeman labor).

Ah. I see. Thank you.

[Pyromancer999]

I am pretty sure a merchant or money lender make much more than that .
In my rules I have common folk who work for a living make between 10 - 30 gp per month .

Merchants and money-lenders are not commoners, generally being aristocrats and experts. Also, your campaign is not the typical case, nor is it in the by-the-book rules, which, as far as I can tell, were what was being discussed in the context of this thread. Even in that case, still not enough to afford a raise dead, although maybe they could afford a low-level band of adventurers to rescue kidnapped kin if they saved for years.

[Elkad]

So how do we fix the Cure Disease problem?

Is there a way to get something like a Locate City Bomb to carry a Cure instead?

Or even just get Detect Disease to cover a huge area?

Permanent item of See Disease should be cheap. Cheap enough to stick them in healing temples, border entrances, city gates, and wherever else. Especially if it gets a discount for being big and non-portable (archway or floor tile). But that won't cover people who dodge it (whether on purpose or accidentally), and when the plague starts, it won't work fast enough.

[Gildedragon]

A fist level artificer can craft a Remove Disease (Healer 2) trap for 3kgp
Set it in a town's outer gate (everyone has to go through in a single file) and voila!

For 4000gp it can be a Never Miss trap

[Crake]

For the record, the setting described in the DMG evolves naturally into the Tippyverse without fiat-based limitations imposed from without. Anyway, presuming said limitations exist (let's say the gods command all high-level casters to spend 95% of their time staring at the wall or something), life as a commoner in a D&D reality is actually much less dangerous than it was in actual pre-industrial Earth, because healing magic exists.

To be fair, the tippyverse is predicated on high level wizards being quite benevolent in their aspirations. Lets face it though, the few high level spellcasters out there don't care about setting up the necessary infrastructure for the tippyverse to come into fruition. What would they possibly recieve out of the scenario aside from personal satisfaction? Maybe if godhood was attained by mortal worship, I could see that as a motivating factor, but absent all else, it would require a lot of sacrifice on the wizard's behalf for an unidentified level of gain.


A fist level artificer can craft a Remove Disease (Healer 2) trap for 3kgp
Set it in a town's outer gate (everyone has to go through in a single file) and voila!

For 4000gp it can be a Never Miss trap

I don't know why people insist in using traps when wondrous architecture exists. Also, the artificer would need to be at least 3rd level for the craft wondrous item feat, and it would still cost them 120 xp, which is double their crafting reserve for that level

[Gildedragon]

To be fair, the tippyverse is predicated on high level wizards being quite benevolent in their aspirations. Lets face it though, the few high level spellcasters out there don't care about setting up the necessary infrastructure for the tippyverse to come into fruition. What would they possibly recieve out of the scenario aside from personal satisfaction? Maybe if godhood was attained by mortal worship, I could see that as a motivating factor, but absent all else, it would require a lot of sacrifice on the wizard's behalf for an unidentified level of gain.



I don't know why people insist in using traps when wondrous architecture exists. Also, the artificer would need to be at least 3rd level for the craft wondrous item feat, and it would still cost them 120 xp, which is double their crafting reserve for that level

They're usually cheaper than architecture...
As to XP: get together a whole bunch of people to pool XP for crafting this piece of infrastructure.
It doesn't need high level wizards or nothing; just a sort of XP tax to boost the town's health.
Using the spell transference, for example.

[Mechalich]

To be fair, the tippyverse is predicated on high level wizards being quite benevolent in their aspirations. Lets face it though, the few high level spellcasters out there don't care about setting up the necessary infrastructure for the tippyverse to come into fruition. What would they possibly recieve out of the scenario aside from personal satisfaction? Maybe if godhood was attained by mortal worship, I could see that as a motivating factor, but absent all else, it would require a lot of sacrifice on the wizard's behalf for an unidentified level of gain.


Okay, that's true. I admit, I'm using the term 'tippyverse' not to represent a specific thing, but to stand in for a wide range of possible outcomes that evolve out of massive quantities of magic being dumped into the world. They don't need to set up the Tippyverse specifically, they might launch the empire of corpses or unleash the magitech revolution or launch the economy of infinite extraplanar slaves, or a number of other things. It doesn't really matter which way you want to go with it but all it takes is one high level wizard with the drive and gumption to remake the world according to their image and it can happen.

Alternatively, the standard setting can collapse under the weight of too much magic, in which case you get post-apocalyptic D&D in the vein of Dark Sun only worse - since Dark Sun represents the 2e version of the wizard war apocalypse and the 3e one is exponentially more devastating.

Either approach is viable, what is not viable is pseudo-medieval fantasy stasis as presented in Greyhawk, FR, Mystara or any other D&D setting. D&D magic is incredibly powerful and shocking abundant. For example, the sample 200 person hamlet in the 3.5 DMG has 5 full casters living in it (1 wizard, 3 clerics, and 1 druid) and 2 partial casters (1 adept and 1 bard). Casters are an insane 3.5% of the population. Major cities are almost certain to have high-level casters: a metropolis is +12 with 4 rolls. Meaning that an 18th level cleric is found in the majority of metropolises. and a metropolis is any city with a population of 25,000+ which a world with a 1200 CE setup might have 100 or more (mostly in China and India). Wizards only get 1d4+12 in the randoms, but you can do a lot with 8th level spells. Ultimately the standard DMG generated world produces hundreds of casters of level 15+. That's more than enough to blast the world into magic-saturated madness.

[martixy]

Merchants and money-lenders are not commoners, generally being aristocrats and experts. Also, your campaign is not the typical case, nor is it in the by-the-book rules, which, as far as I can tell, were what was being discussed in the context of this thread. Even in that case, still not enough to afford a raise dead, although maybe they could afford a low-level band of adventurers to rescue kidnapped kin if they saved for years.

Can we please drop the 1sp crap already?
Unless you wish to argue for a civilization of nothing but ditch-diggers and linkboys.

That's an income for which one might make a strong argument is analogous to less than minimum wage today.

[Godskook]

Interesting bit of fantasy there, but I guess this is a game set in a fantasy world. I wonder if the person that put that together has ever put together an actual family budget. There were a ton of expenses that were left out.

"tons" of expenses? Name them? Be not only specific, but be sure that your listed items are not covered in the abstraction of a mentioned skill.


That thread also makes a lot of bold assumptions,

Well, considering what I'm about to say, could you list *ONE* that's actually an assumption?


the biggest of which is assuming that if someone has skills, he or she will be able to make an appropriate amount of money relative to those skills.

This isn't an assumption, this is rules as written.


I know a lot of people with college degrees that are working at minimum wage jobs. I expect in any world, fantasy or not, similar situations would also exist.

Selection bias. Best data I can find is ~2% of College Graduates are on Minimum Wage. 2 of every 100 Commoner families who're in that situation.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2015/home.htm#table6


I still say (even with some creative accounting) the average commoner would not have access to third level spells. Rich merchants, yes, the average commoner no.

Do you have any evidence to this effect? Cause your arguments against my source were not sufficient.

[Gildedragon]

Can we please drop the 1sp crap already?
Unless you wish to argue for a civilization of nothing but ditch-diggers and linkboys.

That's an income for which one might make a strong argument is analogous to less than minimum wage today.

The apprentice feat gives us a baseline for any "master" of their craft: 5th level

[Keltest]

So how do we fix the Cure Disease problem?

Is there a way to get something like a Locate City Bomb to carry a Cure instead?

Or even just get Detect Disease to cover a huge area?

Permanent item of See Disease should be cheap. Cheap enough to stick them in healing temples, border entrances, city gates, and wherever else. Especially if it gets a discount for being big and non-portable (archway or floor tile). But that won't cover people who dodge it (whether on purpose or accidentally), and when the plague starts, it won't work fast enough.

Just have the local clerics cast it as charity. No follower of a good deity would stand by while Little Billy is dying of the plague. Theres no reason the clerics would give their adventurer prices to dirt farmers, and cure disease has no material components they would need to charge for.

[martixy]

The apprentice feat gives us a baseline for any "master" of their craft: 5th level

I wasn't even talking about mastery, just a halfway decent at his profession trained labourer and not what is essentially a motivated beggar with no marketable skills.

[Gildedragon]

I wasn't even talking about mastery, just a halfway decent at his profession trained labourer and not what is essentially a motivated beggar with no marketable skills.

By master I meant "anyone not in an apprenticeship"
Which does carry some implications about the tables in the DMG... those level 1-4 characters, they're the "young adults" and students

[Fizban]

Are there even any non-monster diseases out there beyond the ones in the DMG and Book of Vile Darkness?
The environment books have some, probably a few in setting related books as well. They're usually weird supernatural things and/or diseases that aren't actually diseases (stormwrack has cabin fever as a disease, for example).



I don't know why people insist in using traps when wondrous architecture exists. Also, the artificer would need to be at least 3rd level for the craft wondrous item feat, and it would still cost them 120 xp, which is double their crafting reserve for that level
Because magical traps are in the DMG and have an Exact Formula PriceTM without any reminders that custom magic items must pass the DM (because it's the trap design section meant primarily for DMs). While wondrous architecture is in an icky 3.0 splatbook most people don't seem to have heard of, and many of the example items are very much not performing the ideal "cast this spell every round until the end of time" function. Though as you are probably aware they have the exact same price for unmovable effects.

What gets me is that not only is wondrous architecture a thing, but the infinite cure disease effect is literally one of the printed items: Bed of Wellness (Remove Disease). It's not Pefectly At-Will though, since the different versions all redirect to the (Lesser Restoration) version which applies LR's 3 round casting time to them all, and you have to stop and lay down. So fancy calculations that say the entire city is cleansed get about 1/4 the mileage at best. An archway or paved area would be better. Or the Platform of Healing, which is already a platform, and does the full Heal spell, for only twice the cost.


The other problem is that just being able to cure disease doesn't actually stop the disease from spreading. We can stop diseases today because we have the facilities and people are trained from childhood (hopefully) not to spread them. A bunch of faux-medieval commoners who don't even know how disease spreads will re-infect each other immediately once they're cured, since DnD has no mechanics for building up an immune resistance to a disease. To make the infinite cure disease work (assuming a virulent enough disease that it's needed at all), you actually need to get the entire town lined up, march them through, then keep anyone from re-infecting the clean side until everyone's clean, and hope the disease isn't being transmitted by some other vector. Like contaminated water, or rats, or. . .

That's where detection comes in. Unfortunately the printed Detect Disease spell is the same as Detect Poison in being single target rather than a cone, and it only appears in Oriental Adventures on the Shaman list. Ignoring that, if you count a conical Detect Disease effect as 1st level then a Brazier of Aura Revealing (Disease) would be 3,000gp and is enough to let you quarantine people early and even work towards understanding disease transmission. And while we're at it a Table of Freshness is kinda huge, only 2/3 the price of an Everfull Basin is enough to purify existing water sources as well as food at the same time, without the basin's dump=destroy risk.

Oh, and while we're pointing out high level wizards not doing their civic duty: I'll mention again how all those epic Mythals in faerun don't seem to cure disease ore create food, let alone remove the need for any physical labor in general, when they could do all three far more easily than any of the stuff they actually do.


Just have the local clerics cast it as charity. No follower of a good deity would stand by while Little Billy is dying of the plague. Theres no reason the clerics would give their adventurer prices to dirt farmers, and cure disease has no material components they would need to charge for.
Also this. Stopping the plague is a standard adventure seed, and it really bugs me when people start using the spellcasting services charge like it's actually a restriction. You pay 150gp to get the church of profiteering to keep you from dying to Mummy Rot. Even considering the idea that someone might drop thousands of gp on magical civic infrastructure means that you've already got spellcasters would could cast the spell either paid for or helping for free.

[hamishspence]

The apprentice feat gives us a baseline for any "master" of their craft: 5th level
Actually that's "Mentor" not "Master" - high enough level to start tutoring others.

Arms & Equipment Guide gives 7 skill ranks (4th level) as the minimum needed to be a Journeyman and 12 skill ranks (9th level) as the minimum needed to be a Master. Though it also says that at 5th level you would expect the Journeyman to possess a set of Masterwork Tools.

Cityscape gives stats for "typical" NPCs - the journeyman is 5th level, the Master is 10th level.

Your basic point - that levels 1-4 (or 1-3 in the case of Arms & Equipment Guide) are apprentices, is good though.

[Mechalich]

Oh, and while we're pointing out high level wizards not doing their civic duty: I'll mention again how all those epic Mythals in faerun don't seem to cure disease ore create food, let alone remove the need for any physical labor in general, when they could do all three far more easily than any of the stuff they actually do.


Myth Drannor's mythal actually did cure disease, via beds of Blueglow Moss, though you had to sleep on them for a while. It also provided a flat 20% chance of curing all diseases per day within it. It also made everyone who resided long term within the mythal immortal, so long as they didn't leave the boundary.

[Fizban]

Myth Drannor's mythal actually did cure disease, via beds of Blueglow Moss, though you had to sleep on them for a while. It also provided a flat 20% chance of curing all diseases per day within it. It also made everyone who resided long term within the mythal immortal, so long as they didn't leave the boundary.
Oh, fair enough for them then.

[Gemini476]

To be fair, the tippyverse is predicated on high level wizards being quite benevolent in their aspirations. Lets face it though, the few high level spellcasters out there don't care about setting up the necessary infrastructure for the tippyverse to come into fruition. What would they possibly recieve out of the scenario aside from personal satisfaction? Maybe if godhood was attained by mortal worship, I could see that as a motivating factor, but absent all else, it would require a lot of sacrifice on the wizard's behalf for an unidentified level of gain.
More pressingly, IMHO, is the issue that the DMG's demographics give you not a whole lot of high-level NPCs. Teleportation Circles, core to the Tippyverse, are a ninth-level Sor/Wiz spell - and Wizards only ever reach level 16 in the demographics. Scrolls of specific ninth-level spells are also distressingly rare, so you're limited to 17th-18th level Clerics with the Rune Domain. A domain that's exclusive to the Forgotten Realms setting, and thus hardly applicable for extrapolations of the "implied setting" of the rules.

Also you need to be CL17 to Permanency the circle, as well as 4,500XP, so that's another cliff you need to ascend - not to mention that you need a cooperating Wizard, or a Cleric with the Time domain - another domain exclusive to the Forgotten Realms setting, and its deities don't overlap with Rune's.

An option, of course, is to have non-human spellcasters cast for you - but most of the high-level ones (i.e. Dragons) cast as Sorcerers, not Wizards, and thus have a harder time knowing the spells. And very few of them are benevolent, especially to the degree that they'd be willing to toss out 4,500XP for you.

You could beseech the gods to cast the spells for you, and that could work, but you're hardly throwing off the yokes of the divine if you go that way. All inter-city connection would be explicitly at the whim of the gods.

(Not to mention that CL8 Dispel Magic still works on it, even if Disable Device doesn't.)


Also this. Stopping the plague is a standard adventure seed, and it really bugs me when people start using the spellcasting services charge like it's actually a restriction. You pay 150gp to get the church of profiteering to keep you from dying to Mummy Rot. Even considering the idea that someone might drop thousands of gp on magical civic infrastructure means that you've already got spellcasters would could cast the spell either paid for or helping for free.

Amen to that. Geas/Quest exists for a reason, and it's so that those PCs too poor to pay for a Raise Dead can perform favors to pay it off instead.

And that's without getting to actual heal-the-sick non-profit churches, which presumably just do stuff pro bono if the danger is high enough. Maybe you'll be put in debt to repay later, and maybe you'll get to go first in line if you actually pay your tithe often, but this kind of stuff is pretty much what the tithe is for.

You don't expect farmers to pay their lord extra for defending them - they've already done it through taxes!

[Chronikoce]

Just have the local clerics cast it as charity. No follower of a good deity would stand by while Little Billy is dying of the plague. Theres no reason the clerics would give their adventurer prices to dirt farmers, and cure disease has no material components they would need to charge for.

Depending on the deity simply being good would not impose any obligation to provide spellcasting services free of charge. Heironeous is good but his clerics and paladins seek out and combat evil. Hanging around town preparing cure disease every day doesn't seem to fit the dogma.

Moradin is also highly militaristic and doesn't have a focus on healing.

So unless a cleric or paladin worships a good god that also emphasizes healing or selfless service to the masses I see no reason that devotion of spellcasting resources would ever be assumed free.

I could see them trading the spellcasting for service though. A sick mother being healed in exchange for the healthy son enlisting with the church's forces for example.

I guess I'm cynical but I've never interpreted the good alignment as requiring selfless action.

[Keltest]

Depending on the deity simply being good would not impose any obligation to provide spellcasting services free of charge. Heironeous is good but his clerics and paladins seek out and combat evil. Hanging around town preparing cure disease every day doesn't seem to fit the dogma.

Moradin is also highly militaristic and doesn't have a focus on healing.

So unless a cleric or paladin worships a good god that also emphasizes healing or selfless service to the masses I see no reason that devotion of spellcasting resources would ever be assumed free.

I could see them trading the spellcasting for service though. A sick mother being healed in exchange for the healthy son enlisting with the church's forces for example.

I guess I'm cynical but I've never interpreted the good alignment as requiring selfless action.

Mostly that's a good argument for why there wouldn't be a cleric of Moradin or Heironeous living in a village of dirt farmers. Which is a fair point, but farmers generally have their own deities which they worship who would possibly have a cleric living in the village as an actual member, and who would be more likely to operate out of either charity or under the principal of "if they like me, I can get them to do favors for me if I ever need them done."

[hamishspence]

More pressingly, IMHO, is the issue that the DMG's demographics give you not a whole lot of high-level NPCs. Teleportation Circles, core to the Tippyverse, are a ninth-level Sor/Wiz spell - and Wizards only ever reach level 16 in the demographics.

Epic Handbook upscales the demographics - so Metropolises get a +16 NPC Character Level modifier instead of +12: 16+1d4 for Wizards and Sorcerers means a minimum of 17th level.

It also allows for "planar metropolises" (any metropolis with 100,000+ or 200,000+ inhabitants - can't recall which, offhand): +20 modifier.

[Fizban]

Scrolls of specific ninth-level spells are also distressingly rare, so you're limited to 17th-18th level Clerics with the Rune Domain. A domain that's exclusive to the Forgotten Realms setting, and thus hardly applicable for extrapolations of the "implied setting" of the rules.
The Rune domain can also be found in Sandstorm of all places. Granted by Thoth of the Egyptian pantheon, originally in Deities and Demigods, but if all you need is a non-setting book then that'll make the domain exist so you can worship the platonic ideal of Runes. Or you could use Craft Portal from Stronghold Builder's Guide, but that requires 17th anyway.

The easiest path to anything is Wish, but it's generally ignored because hardly anyone can mention Wish without immediately following it with cheese. There's an incredibly simple way to do so however: Planar Bind or Plane Shift to a creature with Wish, and then pay them to cast Wish the same as you would a high level spellcaster. The DM can then either use the standard price or make you negotiate, but as long as you pay for it the game remains unbroken.

You'd still be dropping 50k+ on a one-way trip since you need two Wishes, but that just makes me wonder if that's where they actually got the 50k base price for Portals in the first place.

Not that portals have anything to do with maneating monsters curbing humanoid populations, but the industrialization thread seems to have died and here's someone talking about portals so hey.


Epic Handbook upscales the demographics - so Metropolises get a +16 NPC Character Level modifier instead of +12: 16+1d4 for Wizards and Sorcerers means a minimum of 17th level.

It also allows for "planar metropolises" (any metropolis with 200,000+ inhabitants): +20 modifier.
Interesting. It also makes a specific note of being for epic games that say there have always been epic characters around. It does seem quite appropriate for say, Forgotten Realms, but the 3.5 DMG includes the base epic rules with no mention of epic demographics.

Based on my preferred medieval demographics calculator, for a single city of 100,000 you need a mere 44 million overall population taking up 592,000 square miles, assuming averages. Examples on the page include Venice at 100,000 and 15th century Moscow at 200,000, though those probably represent the higher range of the rolls rather than average.

[Pyromancer999]

Can we please drop the 1sp crap already?
Unless you wish to argue for a civilization of nothing but ditch-diggers and linkboys.

That's an income for which one might make a strong argument is analogous to less than minimum wage today.

In the DMG, most all the NPC class people making decent money are either experts and/or aristocrats. Sometimes adepts. It's not at all an ideal setting(and the amount made in Pugwampy's campaigns is actually roughly the same for how I run it for mine), but is how settings are run as according to the DMG, as asked about in the original post.

[EisenKreutzer]

Does the world have to follow the rules when the PCs aren't present?

[Necroticplague]

Does the world have to follow the rules when the PCs aren't present?

If you want to maintain any sense of versimilitude, yes.

[EisenKreutzer]

If you want to maintain any sense of versimilitude, yes.

I actually think that internal consistency in a setting can only be maintained if the rules only apply when the PCs are directly involved. The rules just create too many inconsistencies and strange situations otherwise.

But thats just my personal preference.

[Chronikoce]

Mostly that's a good argument for why there wouldn't be a cleric of Moradin or Heironeous living in a village of dirt farmers. Which is a fair point, but farmers generally have their own deities which they worship who would possibly have a cleric living in the village as an actual member, and who would be more likely to operate out of either charity or under the principal of "if they like me, I can get them to do favors for me if I ever need them done."

I guess it's my opinion that altruists are the exception not the rule. If the community can't provide a reason to stay then the cleric is likely to leave for some locale where they can be properly compensated.

Apart from hermit style clerics or those with some personal calling to serve the poor there seems no reason for a cleric of 3rd+ level to live in a community of dirt farmers and provide free services.

There is also the problem of d&d having evil deities and spellcasters who go around sowing chaos and death for fun. So, for every altruistic cleric handing out free cure disease spells it seems plausible there is some evil cleric spreading disease wherever they go.

[Necroticplague]

I actually think that internal consistency in a setting can only be maintained if the rules only apply when the PCs are directly involved. The rules just create too many inconsistencies and strange situations otherwise.

But thats just my personal preference.

Either way, you're going to suffer from some form of inconsistency. Either rule application is inconsistent, or the setting is inconsistent with the rules. I prefer to just change the setting so it's more in line with the rules, and have them apply evenly.

[EisenKreutzer]

Either way, you're going to suffer from some form of inconsistency. Either rule application is inconsistent, or the setting is inconsistent with the rules. I prefer to just change the setting so it's more in line with the rules, and have them apply evenly.

A valid approach, certainly. Personally I find that only applying the rules when the PCs need to interact with the world gives me more narrative freedopm as a GM. But both approaches are sound.

[Nupo]

It appears that people are thinking about this in two different ways. Some are considering a D&D world, and logically figuring commoner mortality. Others are figuring based only on what is contained in the rule books. The two approaches will yield very different answers.

With the "by the book" method:

Disease will be virtually none existent. As has been pointed out, the rules contain very little about communicable disease, so commoners don't have to worry about that. It doesn't matter if they can afford a Remove Disease spell because they will likely never need to have it cast.

Accidents are mostly due to failed skill checks. Failing some skill checks, like climb, can lead to injury or death, but I can't find anywhere in the rules where it says while preforming your "profession" skill you also have to roll other skill checks. So it looks like death due to accidents is also pretty much none existent.

Old age. Well the rules do contain information on dyeing of old age, so If something else doesn't get them first old age will.

Death by violence. Well here we have something. If you look at the rules governing Random Wilderness Encounters it said to check every hour! Wow, even if you check only when the commoner ventures outside, the average farmer will have had tens of thousands of encounters by the time they reach fifty years old! Even if they have a profession that keeps them in a city they still check once a day for encounters. That would still yield hundreds of encounters in a fifty year life. Yes all the encounters would be (by the book) level appropriate, but the odds are with so many, bad luck would eventually catch up with them. It looks like death by violence would be all but assured.

One side effect of all these encounters is any commoner that survives to old age would be guaranteed to be very, very high level. Since (by the book) they level up every 13.3 encounters, the average 50 year old farmer will be well over 100th level. And because of wealth by level rules, very rich as well. So if your characters ever come across an old beggar, don't trust him, he's actually very high levels and very rich!

[Gemini476]

Wealth By Level is a guideline, not a rule, and NPC Gear Value is primarily meant for "elite" NPCs - i.e. those with proper classes.
An easy way to see this is to notice that the NPC Gear Value is literally just triple-ish the treasure for that CR, but NPC classes have a CR of half their level. If a Commoner 20 had the NPC Gear Value of a 20th-level character, they would have treasure thirty-eight times greater than their CR would indicate! (220K vs. 5.8K)

Also, encounters aren't as simple as you're making them out to be - 13.33 encounters/level is merely a statement of fact since that's how the XP tables work out, but only 50% of encounters are actually supposed to be CR=Average Party Level. And that's for PCs, of course - with NPCs the whole "Tailored vs. Status Quo" thing the DMG talks about is even stronger.

Also, well, if you survived until 100 I'd actually expect them not to be that high a level, since having a bunch of encounters is a good way to die.


On an unrelated note, here's the survival chances for Filth Fever (injury, 1d3 day incubation, DC12, 1d4 Con). This assumes a character with a +0 Fortitude bonus (i.e. Commoner 1-2), and was done via computer simulation (10 million iterations).


CON

Survival Rate

Life Expectancy if Doomed to Die


8 (non-elite)
70%
5,37 days


9 (non-elite)
73%
6.09 days


10

79%

6.85 days


11

81%

7.74 days


12 (non-elite)
85%
8.49 days


13 (non-elite)
87%
9.57 days



It's a nasty disease, I suppose - a 20% mortality rate is nothing to laugh at - but it's not that dangerous. Especially because the DC is so low - others can use a Heal check to help, in which case the patient can choose the higher of the two (and 5E-esque Advantage is really good!), and since as we all know you can Take 10 pretty much whenever out of combat...
Well, let's just say that the only "mundane" DMG diseases that are a big problem are Cackle Fever and Blinding Sickness, because DC16 doesn't let a non-elite first-level Adept Take 10.

Also, just for fun, here's a character with a +2 save bonus (i.e. a Warrior 1) taking on Filth Fever:


CON

Survival Rate

Life Expectancy if Doomed to Die



8
80%
5.83 days


9
82%
6.89 days


10
86%
7.34 days


11
87%
8.41 days


12 (non-elite)
90%
9.03 days


13 (non-elite)
91%
10.13 days

[Yahzi]

This always bothered me...
There's actually an easy way to calculate how much commoners earn. Wheat sells for 1 cp a pound. Medieval farmers could grow about 6 tons of wheat a year. That is an income of 60 gp, of which half would be paid out in taxes (for serfs and such). Hence, commoners make about 30 gp a year. By extrapolation, craftsmen will do much better, perhaps even 100 gp a year (or 400 for a master).

[Fizban]

Wealth By Level is a guideline, not a rule, and NPC Gear Value is primarily meant for "elite" NPCs - i.e. those with proper classes.
An easy way to see this is to notice that the NPC Gear Value is literally just triple-ish the treasure for that CR, but NPC classes have a CR of half their level.
Maybe in Pathfinder, but 3.5 it's an official CR of level-1 for NPC classes. Though their actual CR is at best 1/2 their level for Warriors and Adepts, with full NPC wealth for that level.

I don't mind NPC wealth at all actually, since you've also got to consider houses. Every 1st level commoner has 900gp in wealth? Congratulations, that's not even enough to buy the cheapest shack in the DMG, let alone something like a good horse!

There's actually an easy way to calculate how much commoners earn. Wheat sells for 1 cp a pound. Medieval farmers could grow about 6 tons of wheat a year. That is an income of 60 gp, of which half would be paid out in taxes (for serfs and such). Hence, commoners make about 30 gp a year. By extrapolation, craftsmen will do much better, perhaps even 100 gp a year (or 400 for a master).
Another nice bit of info.

Edit: actually should be 120gp, since a ton is 2,000lbs.

[Gemini476]

There's actually an easy way to calculate how much commoners earn. Wheat sells for 1 cp a pound. Medieval farmers could grow about 6 tons of wheat a year. That is an income of 60 gp, of which half would be paid out in taxes (for serfs and such). Hence, commoners make about 30 gp a year. By extrapolation, craftsmen will do much better, perhaps even 100 gp a year (or 400 for a master).

The DMG gives the extreme tax rates as 20% (+10% tithe), and this article (http://www.medievalists.net/2015/07/how-much-taxes-did-a-medieval-peasant-pay-the-numbers-from-sweden/)gives some historical annual taxes in grams of silver.

One pound of silver, per the PHB, is 5gp - one gram, or one 453.592th of a pound, is therefore 1.1ish copper pieces. The average tax rate of 17g given in the article, then, is ~1,9sp. The extreme tax rate of 227g given works out to 25sp.

So the DMG gives oppressive taxes as being 18gp for your farm, and historical oppressive taxes work out to something more along the lines of 2.5gp.

[Fizban]

The values of currency in dnd have absolutely nothing to do with the values of silver or gold in real life, dnd is ridiculously flush with the two from what I've heard so I just wouldn't count anything measured in real world silver or gold. If butter had a listed price in dnd that would be perfect, but out of all the trade goods and food prices I don't see butter anywhere, which is now incredibly annoying since those taxes would be nice to worth with.

The value of 60gp in wheat is still a very interesting comparison. The old "D&D Commoners Make Plenty of Money" thread (here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?443776-D-amp-D-Commoners-Make-Plenty-of-Money) for a GitP copy) had 500gp per year for skilled craft/profession check labor from a family, down to 200gp after some living expenses. That's about 8 times the raw income of the farmer if the farmer is rated in medieval wheat income rather than Profession: Farmer.

Edit: correction to 120gp for 12,000lbs of wheat means it's only 4 times the income.

There's also the standard upkeep in the DMG. It has self-sufficent at 2gp per month so that 1sp laborers can manage it, if you're laboring all day you can't actually grow your own food but at 1/3sp per day for the raw materials to craft poor meals it's still doable.

Amusingly, the PHB lists a pound of what flour at 2cp, while Arms and Equipment guide has it as the most expensive flour 3gp (cheapest is 15sp). It also has saffron at 65gp/oz instead of 15gp/lb, a whopping 6,933% markup. Not sure which is more accurate, as the PHB feels like it could be based on arbitrary guesses or modern values. I'm pretty sure a chicken, which is several pounds of meat and can produce eggs for some time before then, is worth more than 1lb of flour in a medieval economy.

[Yahzi]

So the DMG gives oppressive taxes as being 18gp for your farm, and historical oppressive taxes work out to something more along the lines of 2.5gp.
Tax rates are misleading. For craftsmen and townies, yes; but for much of history the bulk of the population were poor farmers who worked land they did not own. Sharecropping rates of 50% were not uncommon.

What many people do not realize is that 50% of the population has to be farmers living off of 30 gp a year, just to support the other half living at more reasonable rates. And that's a minimum - historically it went as high as 95% (though the Viking farmers weren't quite that poor).