Party wealth is insane!

[tedcahill2]

I know D&D isn't written to be low-magic or have a realistic economy, but let's say I want to run a campaign that's more realistic to the economy. According to the DMG a level one encounter should provide about 300 gold worth of stuff to be divided among the party. Assuming four players, that's 75 golds per character. According to the Arms and Equipment book a standard NPC laborer earns 1 sp per day. Using Juliet Schor's estimate of average medieval laborers, working two-thirds of the year at 9.5 hours per day, we come to an annual earnings of 245 sp for a medieval laborer, so 24 gp and change.

That means, that a group of adventurers surviving a single level 1 encounter was the potential to earn them more than 3 years of a laborers wages. This. Is. Insane. Goblins should not even have that much wealth on them, that goblins are rich as hell.

Assuming we take steps to balance out other aspects of the game that rely on character wealth, how much should an adventurer really be earning?

Edit: I have no issue with people disagreeing with my assessment and player wealth, that being said, the point of this post is to say that I find it unrealistically high, and I want to reduce it to a reasonable rate based on the reasons I've mentioned. Assuming an adventuring party can track down, defeat, and recover from, a group of goblins once per month, they would effectively be earning 900 gp a year, over 3,600% more than a medieval laborer. A mercenary can be hired for 12 sp per day, or a little less than 300 gp a year with steady work. A mercenary would have the same level of hazard that most adventurers see, and yet they make 1/3 of what an adventure is slated to receive.

The obvious issue here is that a group of adventurers isn't only having one encounter per month (which the above calculations are base on). They are more likely having an encounter every couple of days. I am standing by my original statement that party wealth is insane, and what I'm asking is a more realistic amount they should be earning. If all you want to do is disagree with me please don't bother posting, because I'm really looking for a contribution to my idea of running a campaign where the players aren't tossing around coin like it's candy. I want it to actually feel meaningful when the party has to scrape together a gold piece to bribe a guard.

Side note: I remember seeing a table somewhere showing what bonuses to give players, like weapon and armor bonuses, in campaigns with little to no magic. I don't remember what it was called though. Can anyone point me to it?

[HouseRules]

You could do upkeep. Let the players have two options:

Detail the food, bathing, and other mundane needs of characters.
Higher Cost, but less details


In (1) characters will have more wealth, but the story slows down on the needs of the characters. A meal every 4 hours, six meal a day. Sometimes, the story forces the player upon this situation.

In (2) characters will spend more wealth but does not need to micromanage. Of course, this method is the default method, and only story requirements would force option (1) upon players.

By RAW, you have to enforce option (1), but most players use option (2).

[Hackulator]

You could do upkeep. Let the players have two options:

Detail the food, bathing, and other mundane needs of characters.
Higher Cost, but less details


In (1) characters will have more wealth, but the story slows down on the needs of the characters. A meal every 4 hours, six meal a day. Sometimes, the story forces the player upon this situation.

In (2) characters will spend more wealth but does not need to micromanage. Of course, this method is the default method, and only story requirements would force option (1) upon players.

By RAW, you have to enforce option (1), but most players use option (2).

I found the halfling!

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by tedcahill2
That means, that a group of adventurers surviving a single level 1 encounter….

Well, there is this aspect to it. At first level it’s not a given that everyone in the party will survive an encounter, even with an adversary which OOC is usually regarded as trivial. One lucky crit from a goblin and that’s a party member down, with virtually no realistic prospect of returning in any fashion.

So, first-level adventurers are very much risking their lives, and 75 gp sounds a lot like hazard pay. It may be disproportionate compared to a farm hand’s wage, but it doesn’t strike me as insane.

[HouseRules]

I found the halfling!

That was intentional. Normal Humans have 2 meals a day, both are call "breaking your fast" (Breakfast and Dinner).

The other meals are more modern things.

Lunch short form of Luncheon (Lady's Nuncheon), obvious derived from Nuncheon, which derive from Noon Munch.

Lunch is therefore a Lady's midday snack, and Men don't have them.

Supper? not sure, but darkness comes too early for Supper for the majority. Only the rich could have large bright camp fire at night.
Supper does exist from Ancient Times, but only among the rich upper class, like the religious leaders.

Edit:

Well, there is this aspect to it. At first level it’s not a given that everyone in the party will survive an encounter, even with an adversary which OOC is usually regarded as trivial. One lucky crit from a goblin and that’s a party member down, with virtually no realistic prospect of returning in any fashion.

So, first-level adventurers are very much risking their lives, and 75 gp sounds a lot like hazard pay. It may be disproportionate compared to a farm hand’s wage, but it doesn’t strike me as insane.

Almost 2 years worth of work is made with a single battle. Battle is the way to make a living. Fight some 4 months and you could live from the rest of your life for most mercenary.

[Jeraa]

I know D&D isn't written to be low-magic or have a realistic economy, but let's say I want to run a campaign that's more realistic to the economy. According to the DMG a level one encounter should provide about 300 gold worth of stuff to be divided among the party. Assuming four players, that's 75 golds per character. According to the Arms and Equipment book a standard NPC laborer earns 1 sp per day. Using Juliet Schor's estimate of average medieval laborers, working two-thirds of the year at 9.5 hours per day, we come to an annual earnings of 245 sp for a medieval laborer, so 24 gp and change.

That means, that a group of adventurers surviving a single level 1 encounter was the potential to earn them more than 3 years of a laborers wages. This. Is. Insane. Goblins should not even have that much wealth on them, that goblins are rich as hell.

Assuming we take steps to balance out other aspects of the game that rely on character wealth, how much should an adventurer really be earning?

Side note: I remember seeing a table somewhere showing what bonuses to give players, like weapon and armor bonuses, in campaigns with little to no magic. I don't remember what it was called though. Can anyone point me to it?

One thing to remember is that only untrained laborers (no Craft or Profession skill at all) receive the 1sp per day. Anyone with even a single rank in a Craft or Profession skill receives half their check result in gold pieces per week. Even with just a single rank, that is 5.5 gold a week or 7 silver, 8 copper per day. Using your number of days worked per year means the average person would receive 191 gold per year. That makes the average level 1 treasure less than half a years pay.

If we assume more skilled worker with 4 ranks and a +1 bonus in the relevant bonus, they earn 7.5 gold per week or 10.7 silver per day. Working the same amount of time gives 262gp per year. D&D commoners are not as poor as most believe. Basically it is the village idiots or the otherwise totally inept people who only earn 1sp per day. (Craft can be used untrained. Take 10, make common items (like iron pots - DC 10) and you make far more than just 1 silver per day.)

[tedcahill2]

Well, there is this aspect to it. At first level it’s not a given that everyone in the party will survive an encounter, even with an adversary which OOC is usually regarded as trivial. One lucky crit from a goblin and that’s a party member down, with virtually no realistic prospect of returning in any fashion.

So, first-level adventurers are very much risking their lives, and 75 gp sounds a lot like hazard pay. It may be disproportionate compared to a farm hand’s wage, but it doesn’t strike me as insane.

There are lots of dangerous jobs IRL. I don't know of many that pay $75,000 for one "event"

[HouseRules]

75 gp is 1.5 avoirdupois pound of gold. Got to get the exchange rate better.
So it is closer to 22 troy oz of gold than 75 toz.
Today, 1 t oz au is $1,324.20, so it is under $29,480. We will round this to about $30,000 for easy to think.

[Segev]

One thing to remember is that only untrained laborers (no Craft or Profession skill at all) receive the 1sp per day. Anyone with even a single rank in a Craft or Profession skill receives half their check result in gold pieces per week. Even with just a single rank, that is 5.5 gold a week or 7 silver, 8 copper per day. Using your number of days worked per year means the average person would receive 191 gold per year. That makes the average level 1 treasure less than half a years pay.

If we assume more skilled worker with 4 ranks and a +1 bonus in the relevant bonus, they earn 7.5 gold per week or 10.7 silver per day. Working the same amount of time gives 262gp per year. D&D commoners are not as poor as most believe. Basically it is the village idiots or the otherwise totally inept people who only earn 1sp per day.

Or, possibly, the underaged and apprentices who are taking a day off to earn some pocket change (assuming their master provides for their food and lodging and other necessities).

Given that meals cost more than 1 sp/day, I wouldn't be surprised if "unskilled laborers" also expect their food and lodgings to be handled by their employer (though "we're camping out because we hired you for a trip" isn't something they can afford to scoff at).

[Quertus]

Realistic? Well, let's look at reality.

Let's say that someone comes into our homes and kills one of us, then loots the place. How many times minimum wage in gaming books, magic cards, computers, clothes, furniture, etc would they loot?

Let's say that they also get our credit cards, bank accounts, etc.

Legalized murder seems highly profitable, IMO.

Why be upset that it isn't otherwise in a game?

[liquidformat]

There are lots of dangerous jobs IRL. I don't know of many that pay $75,000 for one "event"

Not specifically looking at hazardous jobs but there are plenty of jobs that pay like this, real estate agents, free lance (fill in the blank), car salesmen (well not this much but they are often looking at living off of a few sales each month)... Adventurers in fantasy are often portrayed as doing one or two big jobs each year then living off the money and training the rest of the time. In fact that is also how d&d often portrays the game, having a big adventure with a couple months of down time where you burn all your money before getting back together to jump into the next adventure.

[Segev]

Not specifically looking at hazardous jobs but there are plenty of jobs that pay like this, real estate agents, free lance (fill in the blank), car salesmen (well not this much but they are often looking at living off of a few sales each month)... Adventurers in fantasy are often portrayed as doing one or two big jobs each year then living off the money and training the rest of the time. In fact that is also how d&d often portrays the game, having a big adventure with a couple months of down time where you burn all your money before getting back together to jump into the next adventure.

Which also explains the "poverty-stricken adventurer, looking for his next meal" trope even at mid-to-high levels. And how you're supposed to actually find time to craft items, magical or otherwise.

But I've never actually seen a game with that much downtime. There's always something pressing that HAS to get done NEXT.

[Quertus]

Which also explains the "poverty-stricken adventurer, looking for his next meal" trope even at mid-to-high levels. And how you're supposed to actually find time to craft items, magical or otherwise.

But I've never actually seen a game with that much downtime. There's always something pressing that HAS to get done NEXT.

Yet another reason to not be a fan of time crunch quests.

[tedcahill2]

I have no issue with people disagreeing with my assessment and player wealth, that being said, the point of this post is to say that I find it unrealistically high, and I want to reduce it to a reasonable rate based on the reasons I've mentioned. Assuming an adventuring party can track down, defeat, and recover from, a group of goblins once per month, they would effectively be earning 900 gp a year, over 3,600% more than a medieval laborer. A mercenary can be hired for 12 sp per day, or a little less than 300 gp a year with steady work. A mercenary would have the same level of hazard that most adventurers see, and yet they make 1/3 of what an adventure is slated to receive.

The obvious issue here is that a group of adventurers isn't only having one encounter per month (which the above calculations are base on). They are more likely having an encounter every couple of days. I am standing by my original statement that party wealth is insane, and what I'm asking is a more realistic amount they should be earning. If all you want to do is disagree with me please don't bother posting, because I'm really looking for a contribution to my idea of running a campaign where the players aren't tossing around coin like it's candy. I want it to actually feel meaningful when the party has to scrape together a gold piece to bribe a guard.

[denthor]

{Scrubbed}

[martixy]

I have no issue with people disagreeing with my assessment and player wealth, that being said, the point of this post is to say that I find it unrealistically high, and I want to reduce it to a reasonable rate based on the reasons I've mentioned. Assuming an adventuring party can track down, defeat, and recover from, a group of goblins once per month, they would effectively be earning 900 gp a year, over 3,600% more than a medieval laborer. A mercenary can be hired for 12 sp per day, or a little less than 300 gp a year with steady work. A mercenary would have the same level of hazard that most adventurers see, and yet they make 1/3 of what an adventure is slated to receive.

The obvious issue here is that a group of adventurers isn't only having one encounter per month (which the above calculations are base on). They are more likely having an encounter every couple of days. I am standing by my original statement that party wealth is insane, and what I'm asking is a more realistic amount they should be earning. If all you want to do is disagree with me please don't bother posting, because I'm really looking for a contribution to my idea of running a campaign where the players aren't tossing around coin like it's candy. I want it to actually feel meaningful when the party has to scrape together a gold piece to bribe a guard.

Let me put it in terms you might understand:
You're comparing minimum wage vs a high paying job with hazard pay.

The difference is gonna be insane, obviously. It is, IRL too, for good reason.

Now, you admit the economy is broken, but insist on drawing comparisons from this broken system.

You CANNOT use a broken system as a benchmark for your more realistic system, which has been your line of reasoning throughout this whole thread. You need objective criteria. I am not however an economist, therefore I cannot offer any.

As a completely subjective, uninformed suggestion, I'd slash all adventurer earnings and all adventuring costs by half. Or increase wealth of the rest of the world by 2.

[HouseRules]

You need objective criteria. I am not however an economist, therefore I cannot offer any.

You need a Labor Economist. If I ask a EEE Engineer to solve Bio Engineer issues because they are both Engineers, then that is the same problem you put up by calling all Economist an Economist. They have specializations.

[Crake]

a standard NPC laborer earns 1 sp per day

The problem is this statement.

A standard NPC does not earn 1sp per day. An untrained labourer earns 1sp per day. Trained labour is more expensive, and even profession (farmer) pays out in gp.

[Segev]

The problem is this statement.

A standard NPC does not earn 1sp per day. An untrained labourer earns 1sp per day. Trained labour is more expensive, and even profession (farmer) pays out in gp.

Yeah. Consider the equivalent IRL: a teenager getting a burger-flipper job.

[heavyfuel]

Here's what I do, and it's strictly a house rule.

Any magic item or items made with rare materials have they price reduced by a factor of 20. Masterwork weapons and all armors are reduced by a factor of 10. WBL is also reduced by a factor of 20.

This way a +2 longsword no longer costs 4315 gp (15 base + 300 masterwork + 4000 magic), it instead costs 245gp (15 base + 30 mw + 200 magic).

A couple of considerations:

1- This makes Masterwork items more expensive in relation to magic items, but makes them much cheaper in relation to the base items. I like this because seriously, it's just a really well made sword. It shouldn't cost 21 times the price of a standard one.

2- Some magic items might be purchasable with starting wealth if you don't reduce it, or standard items might be too expensive for our Lv 1 adventurers. I suggest simply disallowing magic items being bought with starting wealth, though this isn't a problem for me since I never start at level 1.


When I started using this, I even retconned the adventure. I told everyone about the new rule and I slashed their GP by 95%

[Selion]

If we evaluate the common fantasy currency (gold) with gold prices today, a single gold piece would change at 300-400 dollars.
I'm not suggesting that this should be the correct change in a fantasy economy, but 24 gp/year for an untrained laborer correspond to about 7000-8000 dollars/year, which is kinda consistent (if not a bit underpriced)
There are things that oddly are consistent and things that really don't fit.
For example, a group of adventurers at level 8 is expected to be involved in kingdoms issues. At this change a 5 PC party would have about 100 million dollars in total (according to WBL), which is not that unreasonable if they are supposed to be relevant in politics at this scale.
Things go badly wrong when you realize that a cave of goblin with a treasure of 1000 gp would equal to one million dollars (how the hell are they supposed to have found these treasures?)
By the way, remember that even level 1 adventurers are exceptional persons, most people wouldn't go in a cave filled with dozens of cannibal monsters even if you give them a lot of money.

[liquidformat]

I have no issue with people disagreeing with my assessment and player wealth, that being said, the point of this post is to say that I find it unrealistically high, and I want to reduce it to a reasonable rate based on the reasons I've mentioned. Assuming an adventuring party can track down, defeat, and recover from, a group of goblins once per month, they would effectively be earning 900 gp a year, over 3,600% more than a medieval laborer. A mercenary can be hired for 12 sp per day, or a little less than 300 gp a year with steady work. A mercenary would have the same level of hazard that most adventurers see, and yet they make 1/3 of what an adventure is slated to receive.

The obvious issue here is that a group of adventurers isn't only having one encounter per month (which the above calculations are base on). They are more likely having an encounter every couple of days. I am standing by my original statement that party wealth is insane, and what I'm asking is a more realistic amount they should be earning. If all you want to do is disagree with me please don't bother posting, because I'm really looking for a contribution to my idea of running a campaign where the players aren't tossing around coin like it's candy. I want it to actually feel meaningful when the party has to scrape together a gold piece to bribe a guard.

So first issue I am seeing here is that you are saying mercenary level of hazard is equal to adventurer level of hazard. The standard mercenary in most settings is getting paid for guarding duty such as escorting a caravan between cities. And there is only some expectation to have to get into a fight. Whereas, adventuring has 100% expectation of getting in a fight or otherwise risking your life. This difference should be worth something. Also perhaps look at having a variance for 'standard' merc pay based on what the job is. For example I would expect guard duty through a safer route to be less than through a dangerous route which is still less than mercs being hired for military purposes.

Now beyond that, think about what the encounter is and adjust expected wealth accordingly. This might require going through and looking at the expected profits from random encounters a well as planned ones and the equipment that the enemies would have on them. Reducing items and gold down to a minimum for everything. If you don't want characters getting more loot maybe have the enemies using more of their expendable items during the fight.

[tedcahill2]

By the way, remember that even level 1 adventurers are exceptional persons, most people wouldn't go in a cave filled with dozens of cannibal monsters even if you give them a lot of money.

Ok but let’s say I wanted to run a game where adventuring was actually a job, or a profession. A game where a merchant caravan paying 20 gold a head for a few weeks of protection was the going rate, and a good rate.

If that’s the kind of fiction I’m going for, then a dozen goblins can’t be carrying around 300 gold, players would never take those job. The current solution is for said merchant to pay more, maybe 300 gold a head, but then that represents a years pay for an NPC mercenary.

So I’m trying to scale down the gold so that adventuring is still lucrative, but not much more so than being a soldier or a mercenary.

[zlefin]

are you factoring in the very high risks of death from adventuring?

[Selion]

Ok but let’s say I wanted to run a game where adventuring was actually a job, or a profession. A game where a merchant caravan paying 20 gold a head for a few weeks of protection was the going rate, and a good rate.

If that’s the kind of fiction I’m going for, then a dozen goblins can’t be carrying around 300 gold, players would never take those job. The current solution is for said merchant to pay more, maybe 300 gold a head, but then that represents a years pay for an NPC mercenary.

So I’m trying to scale down the gold so that adventuring is still lucrative, but not much more so than being a soldier or a mercenary.

TBH being a guard, a mercenary or a soldier is way less risky than adventuring.
A soldier will probably face a single war in his entire life, and no more than a dozen of battles, but he is paid thorough its entire life, even in peace periods, escorting a caravan is a safe mission most times.

[liquidformat]

Ok but let’s say I wanted to run a game where adventuring was actually a job, or a profession. A game where a merchant caravan paying 20 gold a head for a few weeks of protection was the going rate, and a good rate.

If that’s the kind of fiction I’m going for, then a dozen goblins can’t be carrying around 300 gold, players would never take those job. The current solution is for said merchant to pay more, maybe 300 gold a head, but then that represents a years pay for an NPC mercenary.

So I’m trying to scale down the gold so that adventuring is still lucrative, but not much more so than being a soldier or a mercenary.

Change your payment methods and keep in mind payment expectation. If we change the primary payment method to being at the guild and not from loot after killing said monster it is much easier to control and adjust the flow of gold. Here is an example of jobs though haven't thought to deeply about pricing:

1) 30gp for 2 week caravan guard duty along a safe trade route. (20% chance of one level appropriate encounter)
2) 50gp for 2 week caravan guard duty along a dangerous trade route. (50% chance of one level appropriate encounter, 10% chance of 1 CR 2 appropriate encounter)
3) 300gp for clearing out a cave full of goblins (or xgp/goblin head). (the cave has 20-30 adults with 1 level 3 leader)

For option number three most of the weapons for slings, clubs, and armor/shields that are damaged and don't have full armor rating or have higher check penalties/ lower max dex. (you can do similar for the encounters or have them be animals and what not). This way money is coming from the commission rather than the raid itself. Now the key here is you are correlating risk to pay. Protecting a caravan along a trade route with very little danger is inherently less risky than wading into a cave filled with goblins. Sure killing the goblin community has much higher pay; however, your risk is also dramatically higher too. Many adventurers/mercs would be happy to just continuously take job #1 with little risk and stable pay.

I don't really see a reason why a breakdown like this would be unreasonable. How many level 1 adventuring parties of 4-5 people would risk option 3 and further how many would actually live to see profits especially if they are doing this on a normal basis?

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Not specifically looking at hazardous jobs but there are plenty of jobs that pay like this, real estate agents, free lance (fill in the blank), car salesmen (well not this much but they are often looking at living off of a few sales each month)... Adventurers in fantasy are often portrayed as doing one or two big jobs each year then living off the money and training the rest of the time. In fact that is also how d&d often portrays the game, having a big adventure with a couple months of down time where you burn all your money before getting back together to jump into the next adventure.

This is generally my take on adventuring being too lucrative. Boondock Saints is the closest thing to functional Adventurer/Murder Hobos depicted in a modern setting I can think of. The best way to make real jobs attractive is to make opportunities for murder hoboing few and far between.

Think about Budd, younger brother of the titular Bill from Kill Bill. Budd is presumably as good at killing as Bill or any of the ladies, but he's living in a trailer and working as a bouncer at a strip bar where he's forced to accept abuse from his boss. Without talking to his brother he isn't able to find high risk high reward encounters.

Another example is the characters from The Town (2010). Through most of the film the crew is working for a guy who takes a big cut for organizing and money laundering. This still leaves them with a nice chunk of cash, I wanna say 10k, the main character seems comfortable but his idiot friend is broke a week or two later. That guy really needed a day job, but none of the characters in that film seemed to have any skills besides robbery and the size of their periodic windfalls would make the wages from unskilled labor feel like chump change. If a middle tier existed they probably would have jumped on it.

[HouseRules]

Standard of Living is clearly different. There are lots of daily expenditures that player characters do not need to make because game masters are hand waving them away.

The Standard of Living is Higher (in terms of cost) but Lower (in terms of goods and services). This is well known through the ages. The more modern a society, the more extreme these Standards are because they become Lower (in terms of cost) but Higher (in terms of goods and services). If they go up in cost, that means inflation is too high.

Like religion, Monetary Controllers use inflation and deflation to control the value of money. They accelerate the cycle because of fiat currency. In the Gold Standard, several decades of deflation goes until a new gold mine is found, and inflation occurs locally, and have less impact the further (in influence, not necessary distance) people are from the new gold source. Sometimes, silver and copper mines also lead to inflation, but the nature of deflation is real with any hard currency on physical objects.

Also, most religion makes it a virtue to behave in a way that favors deflation. Forgot, making historical notes is also against the forum rules. Walking an edge here, so cannot elaborate more.

[RoboEmperor]

If we evaluate the common fantasy currency (gold) with gold prices today, a single gold piece would change at 300-400 dollars.
I'm not suggesting that this should be the correct change in a fantasy economy, but 24 gp/year for an untrained laborer correspond to about 7000-8000 dollars/year, which is kinda consistent (if not a bit underpriced)
There are things that oddly are consistent and things that really don't fit.
For example, a group of adventurers at level 8 is expected to be involved in kingdoms issues. At this change a 5 PC party would have about 100 million dollars in total (according to WBL), which is not that unreasonable if they are supposed to be relevant in politics at this scale.
Things go badly wrong when you realize that a cave of goblin with a treasure of 1000 gp would equal to one million dollars (how the hell are they supposed to have found these treasures?)
By the way, remember that even level 1 adventurers are exceptional persons, most people wouldn't go in a cave filled with dozens of cannibal monsters even if you give them a lot of money.

My take on this issue.

Why do billionaires exist in real life? Mid-level Adventurers are as capable and lucky as billionaires so they should have wealth in the billions. CEOs get paid top dollar per hour right? It's because there are only a handful of people capable of doing that job competently. Look at NPC spellcasting prices. A level 1 wizard can make a fortune from that business.

At first goblins having 1,000gp doesn't make sense, at first. But if you think about it, they didn't get that overnight, they got that over like decades of murdering possibly other adventurers too. That's how Demons have a lot of treasure and such on their person. Adventurers are simply robbing the wealth creatures accumulated across decades or even centuries. If I successfully rob a bank I'm a millionaire. Adventurers are bank robbers and banks are monsters.

And wealth doesn't disappear. That 50,000gp magic item you created will be traded and stolen over and over and over, never destroyed. Over millennia later, like Cars, expensive magic items will be common place.

[HouseRules]

It somehow feels the analogy is that Class Level = Membership of Some Organized Crime or Special Forces of a Government.

[ericgrau]

I know D&D isn't written to be low-magic or have a realistic economy, but let's say I want to run a campaign that's more realistic to the economy. According to the DMG a level one encounter should provide about 300 gold worth of stuff to be divided among the party. Assuming four players, that's 75 golds per character. According to the Arms and Equipment book a standard NPC laborer earns 1 sp per day. Using Juliet Schor's estimate of average medieval laborers, working two-thirds of the year at 9.5 hours per day, we come to an annual earnings of 245 sp for a medieval laborer, so 24 gp and change.

That means, that a group of adventurers surviving a single level 1 encounter was the potential to earn them more than 3 years of a laborers wages. This. Is. Insane. Goblins should not even have that much wealth on them, that goblins are rich as hell.

Assuming we take steps to balance out other aspects of the game that rely on character wealth, how much should an adventurer really be earning?

Edit: I have no issue with people disagreeing with my assessment and player wealth, that being said, the point of this post is to say that I find it unrealistically high, and I want to reduce it to a reasonable rate based on the reasons I've mentioned. Assuming an adventuring party can track down, defeat, and recover from, a group of goblins once per month, they would effectively be earning 900 gp a year, over 3,600% more than a medieval laborer. A mercenary can be hired for 12 sp per day, or a little less than 300 gp a year with steady work. A mercenary would have the same level of hazard that most adventurers see, and yet they make 1/3 of what an adventure is slated to receive.

The obvious issue here is that a group of adventurers isn't only having one encounter per month (which the above calculations are base on). They are more likely having an encounter every couple of days. I am standing by my original statement that party wealth is insane, and what I'm asking is a more realistic amount they should be earning. If all you want to do is disagree with me please don't bother posting, because I'm really looking for a contribution to my idea of running a campaign where the players aren't tossing around coin like it's candy. I want it to actually feel meaningful when the party has to scrape together a gold piece to bribe a guard.

Side note: I remember seeing a table somewhere showing what bonuses to give players, like weapon and armor bonuses, in campaigns with little to no magic. I don't remember what it was called though. Can anyone point me to it?

PCs aren't ordinary. That they undergo life or death challenges daily to hunt treasure is their different way of life. And nobility also makes far more than common laborers. That's why a young aristocrat might have hundreds of gp starting out, and his parents tens of thousands in land holdings. One regular house is 5,000 gp. Or for a middle ground, a level 1 craft check from an int 13 expert with skill focus yields 324 sp per week. About 1,690 gp a year. And it's plenty reasonable for his career to peak at level 3-5, making a little more. Profession yields about 18 gp a week at level 1. It takes him a long time to do it, but he can continue for years or decades with little risk of dying.

A PC somehow gets daily challenges that are just enough to give him lots of gold and xp but not quite enough to kill him. RAW is to give a variety of challenges from trivial (but also poor rewards) to impossible, leading to almost certain TPK unless the party runs away. Playing strictly by the book you tend to go through a lot of characters unless you're really lucky. And likewise the high level NPC distribution shows very few that live to high level. Even hitting level 2 is difficult. But DMs tend to coddle their players. Which partly doesn't make sense, and partly makes sense because, well, they're the special heroes so they get some DM fudgery in their favor. Even not counting fudging encounter difficulty in the PC's favor, DMs still tend to fudge other things to keep PCs alive unrealistically. Because bad rolls happen. Regardless PCs are the exception, so "realistic wealth" does not apply.

I've actually seen complaints about "breaking WBL" with simple ways of providing goods or services. The complete reverse of your complaint. Usually with a caster, but even a non-caster hiring himself out could make as much as half of the tricks by being an elite guard. And actually whether from selling magic or simple hiring, it's still much less than an adventuring day. But its "breaking WBL" because it can be done during downtime. That's what happens when you're a pro. Heck by level 5 you're essentially black ops or an Olympian. The main control for that is that you need to find a buyer or find the work. What I suggest in those threads is "If he can roleplay finding buyers, sure, let him make a few hundred or a few thousand extra gp. Just don't assume there are unlimited buyers."

[Florian]

Ok but let’s say I wanted to run a game where adventuring was actually a job, or a profession. A game where a merchant caravan paying 20 gold a head for a few weeks of protection was the going rate, and a good rate.

If that’s the kind of fiction I’m going for, then a dozen goblins can’t be carrying around 300 gold, players would never take those job. The current solution is for said merchant to pay more, maybe 300 gold a head, but then that represents a years pay for an NPC mercenary.

So I’m trying to scale down the gold so that adventuring is still lucrative, but not much more so than being a soldier or a mercenary.

See that window over there? Take your sense of verisimilitude and throw it out of it, immediately. Sorry, best thing you can do is divorcing WBL and the in-game reality. You talk X because that is set as part of the overall system, in universe, X is something entirely different. Accept that, or play a different game that doesn't have WBL hard-baked into it.

[ericgrau]

Ok but let’s say I wanted to run a game where adventuring was actually a job, or a profession. A game where a merchant caravan paying 20 gold a head for a few weeks of protection was the going rate, and a good rate.

If that’s the kind of fiction I’m going for, then a dozen goblins can’t be carrying around 300 gold, players would never take those job. The current solution is for said merchant to pay more, maybe 300 gold a head, but then that represents a years pay for an NPC mercenary.

So I’m trying to scale down the gold so that adventuring is still lucrative, but not much more so than being a soldier or a mercenary.

Florian is totally right in that you'll ruin the game without appropriate WBL. But it is fair to want it to be different.

What you can do without switching rpgs, is provide character points equal to some portion of WBL. Let players buy supernatural abilities that are equivalent to magic items during level up. Keep some portion of WBL as regular items (magical and non-magical), because not every item makes sense as a supernatural ability. Because you can't trade gold for character points nor vis versa, nor can many items be obtained with character points, give them a little more than 100% total to make up for that limitation. For example 75%+50%, or 100%+25%. You likewise might want to cap the total number of slotted items allowed, both since less slots will be used and so that players look less like walking piles of gold. You don't actually track gold WBL (only point WBL), just give out 50% or 25% treasure.

Good candidates for character points include anything that's +X, and x/day spell abilities. For something like armor enhancement bonus, have it only apply when armor is worn. Etc. For spell abilities: 360 gp x spell level x caster level is good. Likewise you can convert self targeting magic items to points, such as boots of speed. Whatever the player finds and makes sense as an internal effect. If it's an external effect, you might want a traditional item for fluff reasons.

[King of Nowhere]

when comparing wages, it must be taken into account that most people get food and shelter with their basic pay. So your average farmer only has a handful of gp per year to buy stuff, but he never needs to eat, and he doesn't pay a rent. He pays taxes, but those are also paid as part of his produce. So his real earnings are much greater than what appears at first glance.

Aside from that, personally I took a two-pronged approach when dealing with the economy.
1) just like the real world has places where people earn 1 dollar per day and live with it, and places where people earn 50 dollars per day but most thing cost more in proportion, so happens in my world. And the standard prices are third world prices. In rich countries (where any adventurer above level 5 lives) the common people earn one gp per day, and adventurer's wealth is not so insane anymore. I use 1 gp = 50 dollars as a rule of thumb. Most sources give a higher value, but that's justified by different purchasing power in different places. A single gp will fetch a couple chickens in a rich place, several dozens in a poor place.

2) loot is also depending on what makes sense. You pick a poket in the first world, you are likely to find a few gold pieces. In the third world, you'lll find maybe a silver; in some places showing a few gold pieces may get you killed. So third world bandits will have a meager loot in line with the local economy, while first world bandits will have much, much more. And same goes for goblins.

because of this disparity in earning opportunity, everyone with some class level goes to the first world. and this brain drain is the main reason the third world remains poor.

[Darth Ultron]

Well, I think an adventurer in modern types fits more along the lines of mercenary/bounty hunter/private security/treasure hunters/detectives. People that have very dangerous jobs, but also get a LOT of pay for it.

[Hackulator]

Adventurers are basically paid superheroes. How much do you think superheroes could get for their services? I would bet it's a huge amount.

[Saintheart]

Well, I think an adventurer in modern types fits more along the lines of mercenary/bounty hunter/private security/treasure hunters/detectives. People that have very dangerous jobs, but also get a LOT of pay for it.

Mercenary, maybe. Bounty hunter, I guess. Treasure hunter, yes, if there's no law on eminent domain and they happen to be good at their profession. But your average private security guard or detective isn't paid that much for what they do.

Also, the real question to be answered on adventurers isn't how they become gazillionaires in the course of slaughtering big tranches of the un/natural world, the question is how the hell they manage to acquire the wealth required to fit themselves out in the first place. If your average sodbuster can only earn about 191 gp per year and then all his life expenses have to come out of that, then one wonders how the illiterate barbarian starts his adventuring life at age 18-25 or so with 100 gp in his pocket.

But then D&D economics just doesn't fit with real world costs for the time anyway. A guy with a suit of armour, a good horse, and a sword had the sort of money which at the time more equates to owning a Ferrari and designer clothes. Swords could be used as collateral for loans, that's how valuable they were. Compare that with the pittance you have to pay for the bog-standard longsword in 3.5.

[Doug Lampert]

Adventurers are basically paid superheroes. How much do you think superheroes could get for their services? I would bet it's a huge amount.

And, as has been pointed out repeatedly, 1sp is the cost to hire the neighbor's kid to water your garden or watch your fire. It assumes no useful skill or ability and is specifically day labor so you can't count on when it will be available.

If you have a week, craft is usable untrained, pays half check result in GP/week on work for hire, and thus gives someone with 3 Int, no skill, and taking 10 a pay rate of 3 GP/week. A more typical human or dwarf commoner at level 1 will often hit a +10 bonus with masterwork tools (which pay for themselves in less than 2 years, so he should have them for his main job).

That's 546 GP a year, for a dirt farmer, who doesn't own his farm, works by hiring out on the week, and who's employers don't particularly like him and are giving him the same deal they'd give a random stranger.

Suddenly, risking your life for 75 GP doesn't sound so good.

The OP's problem is that he's grossly overestimating the value of 1 sp by treating it as a real job's pay, rather than as what you pay the next-door neighbor's kid to mow your yard or babysit.

[AmeVulpes]

But then D&D economics just doesn't fit with real world costs for the time anyway. A guy with a suit of armour, a good horse, and a sword had the sort of money which at the time more equates to owning a Ferrari and designer clothes. Swords could be used as collateral for loans, that's how valuable they were. Compare that with the pittance you have to pay for the bog-standard longsword in 3.5.

Swords (and more generally weapons) were actually fairly cheap at times. Particularly right after the plague, from what I understand. (Source: LindyBeige)

But yeah, barring times of severe population-decline, swords were freakin' expensive. If OP wants to balance the world's economy around minimum wage, he'll have to start at the chicken and build everything all the way up.
----------------------------------

If you have a week, craft is usable untrained, pays half check result in GP/week on work for hire, and thus gives someone with 3 Int, no skill, and taking 10 a pay rate of 3 GP/week. A more typical human or dwarf commoner at level 1 will often hit a +10 bonus with masterwork tools (which pay for themselves in less than 2 years, so he should have them for his main job).

At the risk of stepping outside game mechanics, who is hiring all of these people and where does that person's money come from?

[Saintheart]

Swords (and more generally weapons) were actually fairly cheap at times. Particularly right after the plague, from what I understand. (Source: LindyBeige)

But yeah, barring times of severe population-decline, swords were freakin' expensive. If OP wants to balance the world's economy around minimum wage, he'll have to start at the chicken and build everything all the way up.

Not a bad reason to set the game in a post-apocalyptic setting: the plague wipes out the population, which crashes weapon prices but makes farmers a lot more valuable and treasured by feudal overlords (i.e. what happened after the Black Plague.)

[Quertus]

Also, the real question to be answered on adventurers ... is how the hell they manage to acquire the wealth required to fit themselves out in the first place. If your average sodbuster can only earn about 191 gp per year and then all his life expenses have to come out of that, then one wonders how the illiterate barbarian starts his adventuring life at age 18-25 or so with 100 gp in his pocket.

That's easy. When the BBEG came through, they murdered the PC's entire village. In their grief, they did the only thing that they could: they looted the bodies. They brought the loot to the big city, where they meet other distraught former villagers, who taught them the path of the murderhobo. They've been adventuring together ever since, trying to repay the BBEG for their sudden windfalls, killing everyone the BBEG ever knew, collecting all said targets' possessions, in order to one day give the BBEG his just reward.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Hackulator
How much do you think superheroes could get for their services? I would bet it's a huge amount.

And yet Captain America says he can’t afford to live in Brooklyn. :smalltongue:

[Saintheart]

And yet Captain America says he can’t afford to live in Brooklyn. :smalltongue:

Yet another argument not to work in the public sector.

[Hackulator]

And yet Captain America says he can’t afford to live in Brooklyn. :smalltongue:

Well I'm betting he doesn't charge for his services and he doesn't take money out of villain's pockets when he defeats them, or roll their bases for loot lol.

[Mechalich]

Not a bad reason to set the game in a post-apocalyptic setting: the plague wipes out the population, which crashes weapon prices but makes farmers a lot more valuable and treasured by feudal overlords (i.e. what happened after the Black Plague.)

Essentially, all standard D&D settings are post-apocalyptic, some of them just more obviously than others and the distance from the apocalypse may be fairly remote as in Dragonlance, but there's always a lost ancient civilization there somewhere. Having fallen civilizations from the past is pretty much a prerequisite for having dungeons to delve in the first place.

[Andreaz]

There are lots of dangerous jobs IRL. I don't know of many that pay $75,000 for one "event"

Well, the game ignores marginal pressure...

[ericgrau]

There are lots of dangerous jobs IRL. I don't know of many that pay $75,000 for one "event"

Based on past discussions, 75 gp is more like $1,500, maybe $7,500 tops. Even the $30,000 estimate based on the modern value of gold doesn't really hold true. Besides being an arbitrary fantasy currency, the value of gold changes greatly over the centuries.

Continually going back to unskilled laborer or hireling wages is like looking at 3rd world wages. It will make everything else look huge. In a game modeled after a time when much of Europe was 3rd world. At least start with a skilled laborer making 18 gp a week, and sometimes more. Or a small house costing 5,000 gp.

A low level adventurer is more like a thug getting a few thousand dollars to take care of something. And usually he isn't paid nearly that amount, but rather he's allowed to keep the property of the targets. An unlucky adventurer might find nothing. Level 5 you get to the elite who picks up around tens of thousands of dollars worth of property from infiltrating and dismantling a well guarded base. Finally when you are a level 11+ legend that gets spoken of for centuries, you might get hundreds of thousands of dollars to a little over a million from taking out an important military target and stripping the base of all their magical equipment. Plus the contents of their treasury.

Honestly PCs need to do a better job of selling off the land and raw resources they obtain. It sounds like they're getting short changed if anything.

[HouseRules]

Based on past discussions, 75 gp is more like $1,500, maybe $7,500 tops. Even the $30,000 estimate based on the modern value of gold doesn't really hold true. Besides being an arbitrary fantasy currency, the value of gold changes greatly over the centuries.

If we want to go with the pre-Fiat currency social manipulation, then 1 troy ounce is $20, and 75 gp is about 22 troy ounces, making it about $440, which is clearly lower than your $1,500 and $7,500 estimates.

[Selion]

Well, I think an adventurer in modern types fits more along the lines of mercenary/bounty hunter/private security/treasure hunters/detectives. People that have very dangerous jobs, but also get a LOT of pay for it.

I second this. By the way, there are a LOT of things that don't fit well together. Lets take a change of 1gp -100 gp, which seems more consistent in rispect to 1gp - 300 gp which i proposed
Pig: 3 gp -> 300 dollars OK
rowboat: 50 gp -> 5000 dollars... NOPE
wagon: 50 gp -> 5000 dollars... MAYBE
Tent, medium: 15 gp -> 1500 dollars NOPE
...

BTW, despite some oddities, the change should be likely around 1->100

[ericgrau]

If we want to go with the pre-Fiat currency social manipulation, then 1 troy ounce is $20, and 75 gp is about 22 troy ounces, making it about $440, which is clearly lower than your $1,500 and $7,500 estimates.

All the more reason adventurers make too little then. But likewise not a fit for an arbitrary made up fantasy currency. $1,500-$7,500 ($20-$100 per gp) is from threads estimating buying power and so forth. Leaning towards the lower end IIRC, but I'm not sure.

[HouseRules]

I second this. By the way, there are a LOT of things that don't fit well together. Lets take a change of 1gp -100 gp, which seems more consistent in rispect to 1gp - 300 gp which i proposed
Pig: 3 gp -> 300 dollars OK
rowboat: 50 gp -> 5000 dollars... NOPE
wagon: 50 gp -> 5000 dollars... MAYBE
Tent, medium: 15 gp -> 1500 dollars NOPE
...

BTW, despite some oddities, the change should be likely around 1->100

The economy changes a lot, especially starting in the 19th Century. The relative prices of goods and services are clearly different.

Prices of many goods and services are relatively lower because of abusing specialization. By abusing specialization, people at the top make more money, and people at the bottom make less. The people at the bottom makes so much less money that goods and services have their relative prices drop significantly.


All the more reason adventurers make too little then. But likewise not a fit for an arbitrary made up fantasy currency. $1,500-$7,500 ($20-$100 per gp) is from threads estimating buying power and so forth. Leaning towards the lower end IIRC, but I'm not sure.

Of course, it should be the lower end. From as low as $437.42 to as high as $29,000 is still a large range of exchange rates.

The important thing is that we have gone through The Pennyfarthing Effect (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePennyfarthingEffect), which is why the process to create goods become cheaper. Many goods and services are cheaper in relative prices that the modern world just cannot compare. The pre 19th-Century have easier time to compare, but still difficult.

[DeTess]

The economy changes a lot, especially starting in the 19th Century. The relative prices of goods and services are clearly different.

Prices of many goods and services are relatively lower because of abusing specialization. By abusing specialization, people at the top make more money, and people at the bottom make less. The people at the bottom makes so much less money that goods and services have their relative prices drop significantly.

I'm pretty sure prices are lower because of mass production, because if you want a handmade wooden rowboat or canvas tent, the prices suggested aren't that far off.

[HouseRules]

Mass production is abusing specialization. Many people support sweatshops as long as it is not in their country.

Food Imports to America need a 40x markup in order to have competitive price. Otherwise, the price of food is too low.

Shall we say, those third world countries' currency are forced to be under valued by the super powers of the world, or by the elite of those nation to maintain power over the population.

[DeTess]

Mass production is abusing specialization. Many people support sweatshops as long as it is not in their country.

Food Imports to America need a 40x markup in order to have competitive price. Otherwise, the price of food is too low.

Shall we say, those third world countries' currency are forced to be under valued by the super powers of the world, or by the elite of those nation to maintain power over the population.

House Rules, the forum rules expressly forbid real world politics, and any discussion regarding this will violate it.

@OP: another way you can avoid the massive wealth issue is to hand out most wealth as useful and suitable magic items, and give no way of turning these items into gold, effectively decoupling the items from gold. That way the party still has the expected wbl without actually getting unreasonable amounts of gold.

[HouseRules]

Purchase Power Parity is controlled by Real World Politics, and that is an issue why we cannot compare with Purchase Power Parity.

[Mars Ultor]

Ok but let’s say I wanted to run a game where adventuring was actually a job, or a profession. A game where a merchant caravan paying 20 gold a head for a few weeks of protection was the going rate, and a good rate.

If that’s the kind of fiction I’m going for, then a dozen goblins can’t be carrying around 300 gold, players would never take those job. The current solution is for said merchant to pay more, maybe 300 gold a head, but then that represents a years pay for an NPC mercenary.

So I’m trying to scale down the gold so that adventuring is still lucrative, but not much more so than being a soldier or a mercenary.


Security guards in stores often earn slightly above minimum wage. Armored car security guards, who are expected to have a gun license and training, get paid about $15 an hour. The security guard positions that require military experience pay $40,000 to start. That's a twenty-five percent difference in starting salaries. The veterans who hire out as mercenaries/security in the Middle East get paid as contractors--no benefits, but they can earn about $10,000 per month.

If you've got some weapons training you'll get a job on a caravan. If you're the head of security for the caravan or there's been trouble in the past, they'll hire a veteran. Maybe someone who was in a few battles, or he adventured for a little while. Or perhaps an older guy who can still kick a little ass, but can't or won't live the adventurer life anymore. If you're a young guy with a shiny new sword and chain shirt, and you think you're invincible, you're going to find some goblins, stab them in the face, and take their stuff.


I'm wondering if you're familiar with the Mansio or Caravanserai systems? These were government sponsored caravan facilities spaced out along the roads, each one a day's travel apart for a wagon. The governments maintained and guarded them to provide security for government representatives on business, other wealthy travelers, and caravans. Perhaps the PCs aren't just ordinary minimum-wage caravan guards, maybe they're government "troubleshooters" who often escort important officials and caravans, but also take on other missions. They get a decent salary, some legal authority, and keep 90% of any loot they collect on their missions.

[Mars Ultor]

A low level adventurer is more like a thug getting a few thousand dollars to take care of something. And usually he isn't paid nearly that amount, but rather he's allowed to keep the property of the targets. An unlucky adventurer might find nothing. Level 5 you get to the elite who picks up around tens of thousands of dollars worth of property from infiltrating and dismantling a well guarded base. Finally when you are a level 11+ legend that gets spoken of for centuries, you might get hundreds of thousands of dollars to a little over a million from taking out an important military target and stripping the base of all their magical equipment. Plus the contents of their treasury.

Honestly PCs need to do a better job of selling off the land and raw resources they obtain. It sounds like they're getting short changed if anything.


Adventurers are minor nobility. The origin stories about them being homeless waifs on the street having to pickpocket and pickup a few coppers through prestidigitation are nonsense. Those are like the stories of celebrity kids who claim they had to sleep on a friend's couch or live out of their car. A local lord's family has half-a-dozen children who survive to adulthood. The first-born son is going to be his heir, the second son is kept safe in case something happens to the first kid. The girls are going to married off to other lords in order to maintain their connections and perhaps move up in wealth and position. Son #3 is just another mouth to feed. They want him out of the castle and doing something with his life instead of harassing the serfs and impregnating the maids. They send him off to get training as a squire or enroll him in wizard's college.


King John of Magna Carta/Robin Hood fame, was the fourth-born son of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Henry II nicknamed his son "John Lackland," because it was expected that John would wind up with nothing, not even an inheritance from his wealthy mother. He was expected to be pushed out but (fortunately for John) two of his older brother's rebelled against their father and were killed, then Richard was off on a crusade for a while, came back and died at 41. John ended up being king for about seventeen years and inheriting everything. If you're not the son of Henry II, King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou, Maine, and Nantes, and Lord of Ireland, but instead the youngest son of some vassal in Wessex, you're not getting anything, your brother will inherit a couple hundred acres and a drafty castle, you're getting starting gold and the legal connections that enable a murder-hobo lifestyle.

[ShurikVch]

Not all non-adventurers are equal in their income - even regardless of ranks in skills

Table 4–2: Primary Skills for Hirelings in Arms and Equipment Guide lists daily wage for various hirelings:

Two lowest are Polisher/cleaner (8 cp) and Courier (2 cp/mile)

Two highest are Sage and Siege Engineer - they both got 2 gp/day

[Hand_of_Vecna]

If you've got some weapons training you'll get a job on a caravan. If you're the head of security for the caravan or there's been trouble in the past, they'll hire a veteran. Maybe someone who was in a few battles, or he adventured for a little while. Or perhaps an older guy who can still kick a little ass, but can't or won't live the adventurer life anymore. If you're a young guy with a shiny new sword and chain shirt, and you think you're invincible, you're going to find some goblins, stab them in the face, and take their stuff

This is on the right track. The one change that needs to be made to enable the world to look this way is making the opportunities for murderhoboing appropriately rare.

If me and a couple buddies could just choose to have a CR 1 encounter everyday we'd never stop. After a week we'd have much better mundane and some emergency consumables and once we reached level 2 our risk of death would be trivial, but we wouldn't want to scale up the encounters until we were sure we could all survive one in a million crits or had the funds for a raise dead in the petty cash.

Obviously this scenario I've described is ridiculous, you can't choose to have low level encounters you have to take jobs that carry different approximate risks and payscales or wait around just widdling your purse away, either way you're waiting for targets of opportunity and it's up to the DM to place all of these things in the world in proportions that will allow the game to be about fantasy adventure while also not offending your personal sense of verisimilitude. The problem does not inherently lie with the treasure tables as is.

[Mars Ultor]

Obviously this scenario I've described is ridiculous, you can't choose to have low level encounters you have to take jobs that carry different approximate risks and payscales or wait around just widdling your purse away, either way you're waiting for targets of opportunity and it's up to the DM to place all of these things in the world in proportions that will allow the game to be about fantasy adventure while also not offending your personal sense of verisimilitude. The problem does not inherently lie with the treasure tables as is.


Luckily, PCs are greedy enough to keep going after harder monsters in order to get better loot, otherwise they'd just become serial killers who stalk goblins.

[Yahzi]

According to the Arms and Equipment book a standard NPC laborer earns 1 sp per day.
The A&E is dreadful. It lists hireling pay in silver and food prices in gold. This clearly makes no sense. You can hire a high-level knight for less than two pounds of bread a day.

That said, 1 sp/day is not terribly unbalanced for a low-end wage earner (like a peasant). My Merchants of Prime (at DriveThruRPG for free) shows different life-styles and incomes (along with prices for everything you can think of), and really, they all pretty much make sense. You start with 1 cp = 1 lb of wheat and work forward. Peasants make 40 gp a year, crafstmen make 100 gp, masters make 200 or more, and nobles start at 400 gp a year.

What you are missing is that every 1st level character is a noble. By definition, having bonus HPs, skills, and spells makes you *special*. If you want to play ordinary people, they have 4 skill ranks, 4 HPs, and a +2 to STR or something.

[Yahzi]

At the risk of stepping outside game mechanics, who is hiring all of these people and where does that person's money come from?
1 lb of wheat sells for 1 cp.

Using medieval technology a farmer can net about 6 tons of wheat a year after putting aside seed for the next year. That's 60 gp a year. Even with share-cropping taxes of %50 that's 30 gp a year, which is just enough to keep food on the table for a family of 4.

75% or more of your population are farmers. That means the other 25% get to split his economic excess, which leads to craftsmen making ~100 gp a year.

[SLOTHRPG95]

The A&E is dreadful. It lists hireling pay in silver and food prices in gold. This clearly makes no sense. You can hire a high-level knight for less than two pounds of bread a day.

That said, 1 sp/day is not terribly unbalanced for a low-end wage earner (like a peasant). My Merchants of Prime (at DriveThruRPG for free) shows different life-styles and incomes (along with prices for everything you can think of), and really, they all pretty much make sense. You start with 1 cp = 1 lb of wheat and work forward. Peasants make 40 gp a year, crafstmen make 100 gp, masters make 200 or more, and nobles start at 400 gp a year.


I'm not as familiar with the AEG, but the PHB lists a loaf of bread at a cost of 2 cp, and a weight of 1/2 lb. What sort of broke hedge-knight is the AEG supposing if he can be hired for 2 lb. of bread?

The DMG also has prices for hirelings based off of their profession, with unskilled laborers earning 1 sp/day (which is what most of the focus is on), and on the high end sages making 2+ gp/day. Among common types of skilled laborers, scribes and basic craftsman make 3 sp/day, clerks and smiths make 4 sp/day, architects and engineers make 5 sp/day, and limners and other artisans make 6 sp/day. So how much should a 1st-level PC make in a day if they have 4 ranks in Profession (clerk) for a total bonus of +6? Well, those are NPC prices, and so we disregard them and say 16/2 = 8 gp/week. The PCs aren't making a choice between money for adventuring and money for working at NPC wage levels. Their WBL is higher than an NPC's WBL, even when the two have the exact same PC class. Similarly, they get paid more for a week doing the same work. It makes no sense from an economic (simulationist) perspective, but all the sense in the world from a gameist perspective. Most people aren't playing D&D to play average Joe the clerk, or even average Joe the mercenary. They're looking to play someone special, and that's something that D&D provides, up to and including having higher levels of income and wealth than they "should."

To OP: if you really want to limit player wealth and make every gold piece feel like it counts, that's a valid choice. However, know that some of your players might grumble about being perpetually short on cash. If that doesn't bother you, go on ahead, but maybe also reduce the price of certain things, or they'll just start bribing those guards with a dagger they found off any old dead goblin, instead of a scraped-together gold piece.

EDIT: Looking back, there's way too many different sources for costs of wages in this edition, and hardly any of them agree with each other. Off the top of my head, there's the hireling info in the PHB, the skill check as wage info in the PHB, the hireling info in the DMG, the hireling info in the DMG II, the whatever in the AEG, and the arcanist-specific monthly retainers in Complete Arcane. So much for internal consistency, or user friendliness. :smalleek:

[Jeraa]

EDIT: Looking back, there's way too many different sources for costs of wages in this edition, and hardly any of them agree with each other. Off the top of my head, there's the hireling info in the PHB, the skill check as wage info in the PHB, the hireling info in the DMG, the hireling info in the DMG II, the whatever in the AEG, and the arcanist-specific monthly retainers in Complete Arcane. So much for internal consistency, or user friendliness. :smalleek:

It almost like D&D isn't an economics simulator, but a hack & slash, murderhobo, dungeon crawl game. The game has always been about breaking & entering, murder, and theft (from monsters, of course). Everything else is secondary and is treated as such. The problem isn't the rules being bad, the problem is people trying to use D&D for things it was never really meant to do.

If someone wants their world to make sense, they shouldn't be using D&D in the first place.

[Random Sanity]

What makes sense to me is that the relative wealth of PCs is to be expected given their circumstances, and trying to compare it with hired mercs and the like is a function of survivorship bias.

Survivorship bias is the classic myth of "if so-and-so can pull it off, anyone can", which ignores the fact that those who made it to the top are a rare breed. Bill Gates is the classic IRL example: people see a university dropout who became one of the richest guys on the planet. They miss the meat of the story - Bill is an anomaly, a perfect storm of exceptional talent, powerful personal connections, and right-place-right-time opportunity, in a world where most people could count themselves lucky to have any one of those.

PC adventurers are the same way - they're the perfect storm of raw ability, blessings from on high (be it noble family or divine aid), and having the good fortune to get level-appropriate encounters. They're well ahead of the curve before the adventure even starts. They're the exception to the rule. An adventuring party that sets out without that level of plot armor is going to end up like the priestess's original group in Goblin Slayer - hacked to pieces before they realize how reckless they're being.

[SLOTHRPG95]

It almost like D&D isn't an economics simulator, but a hack & slash, murderhobo, dungeon crawl game. The game has always been about breaking & entering, murder, and theft (from monsters, of course). Everything else is secondary and is treated as such. The problem isn't the rules being bad, the problem is people trying to use D&D for things it was never really meant to do.

If someone wants their world to make sense, they shouldn't be using D&D in the first place.

Just because it's not an economics simulator doesn't mean that it can't be slightly better on internal economic consistency. Also, I take issue with everything after the "but" in your first sentence. Sure, D&D can just be a game for murderhobos to crawl through dungeons, killing and looting and doing not much else, but there's plenty of campaigns where that isn't the central focus. And telling weird, fantastic stories that might rely more on out-of-combat experiences than in-combat experiences isn't something that D&D "was never really meant to do." So (for example) in a campaign focused on political intrigue, perhaps better rules vis a vis pricing of goods and services would be appreciated for when two factions get into a trade dispute. Or heck, if you're laying siege to an enemy's keep, maybe it'd be nice to have an internally consistent rule set for the cost of all the hirelings in your army. And that's a scenario that definitely falls into "things that D&D was meant to [be able to] do."

[zlefin]

hmmm; the problem lies in the challenges of coherent economic modeling vs what's feasible and enjoyable to do in a game.
as a rule, most of these economic issues would need to be handled by the dm, which is already an overburdened job.

[SLOTHRPG95]

hmmm; the problem lies in the challenges of coherent economic modeling vs what's feasible and enjoyable to do in a game.
as a rule, most of these economic issues would need to be handled by the dm, which is already an overburdened job.

This explains (at least partially) the disparity between PC and NPC income for the same task. At low levels (say 3rd, as a point of reference), while the party wizard and cleric are spending the next two weeks scribing scrolls and brewing potions, the party Bard wants to feel like their downtime isn't wasted. So which seems more notable: earning 4 sp/day for performing, or 1d6 gp/day? The dwarf fighter spends his downtime working as a mason, since that's fun and flavorful and he has the ranks. Is it more likely to seem an irrelevant decision if he's making 3 sp/day, or 12 gp/week? At low levels, the former is still small enough to be irrelevant, where as the latter is small but not totally insignificant. Sure this sort of thing falls away at mid-level, where even 10 gp/day is chump change unless you're having abnormally long amounts of down time.