The Profession rules don't distinguish between gemcutters, armourers and dirt farmers (although AIR the DMG actually says farming is not a profession), so they're not much help in general. They can be used as a guideline to skilled-craftsman middle class income though. Maybe for a guy managing a big farm estate/latifundia/plantation, profession (farmer) would make sense, but not for subsistence farming which is described as the 1sp/day level.
economy of dnd
Eldritch_Lord
Adventurer
1) 1sp/day is for unskilled labor only--day laborers, porters, and suchlike. Subsistence farming may not make you rich, but it does require more knowledge and skill than "move X to place Y until I say stop." The guy running a normal farm has 1-4 ranks in Profession, while someone running an estate/plantation has Skill Focus (Profession), high Wis, and lots of lackeys to do a lot of the work.
2) If you're looking at the economy of D&D, you use the Profession rules; whatever kind of professional you are, you use Profession to make your wealth. Note that it's wealth, though, not money--commoners aren't necessarily making actual gold, they're probably making that wealth in terms of barterable goods, food they eat themselves, and so forth.
3) The D&D world is a lot closer to the Renaissance era than the Medieval era, what with the later-era weapons and armor available, greater degree of social mobility of the population, the lower degree of dominance of society by religion, and so forth. D&D commoners aren't dirt farmers, they're somewhat-independent farmers that may or may not own land (much closer to landowners than serfs, at least) but who make a living off their work without owing it all to a master or lord.
I'd say the levels of skill involved in porterage and subsistence farming were comparable, although it depends on the climate and terrain - some places are much much harder to farm than others.
Anyway you have an interesting non-Malthusian or post-Malthusian interpretation. I don't think it's quite what the 3e designers intended, but it certainly works for eg Eberron to treat D&D farmers like their modern developed-world equivalent, rather than the $2-a-dayers (well, more like $10 a day) I use.
the Jester
Legend
The best thing on this is to check with your dm as to his assumptions on the economy.
The original price lists were designed to reflect a "gold rush" situation (see comments in the 1e PH). Different dms will have entirely different approaches to these things.
In my campaign, the economic value of one gold piece is defined as Enough money for a peasant to survive for a year. This assumes that the peasant grows most of his or her own food, builds or barters for most supplies, etc.
The original price lists were designed to reflect a "gold rush" situation (see comments in the 1e PH). Different dms will have entirely different approaches to these things.
In my campaign, the economic value of one gold piece is defined as Enough money for a peasant to survive for a year. This assumes that the peasant grows most of his or her own food, builds or barters for most supplies, etc.
Eldritch_Lord
Adventurer
Not really. Subsistence farmers aren't bad or unskilled farmers, they're farmers who only make enough to feed their own families because they owe all their crops to a lord, because the ground isn't fertile enough to do better, because they don't have enough land, etc. We still have plenty of subsistence farmers today in remote parts of the world, and those farmers are plenty skilled enough to eke out every bit of usability out of the land they have. Calling them unskilled laborers really does them a disservice.
Malthus only considered food and population in his theory; if you take technological development (or in this case magic) into account, you can gain more resources from the same land as population increases without needing any catastrophes to rein in the population, just as Chinese and Indian subsistence farmers keep trying to squeeze more and more food out of their small plots of land.
That said, I don't see how a Renaissance tech level is incompatible with Malthusian theory, seeing as if anything fits the model of "you need violence and plagues and such to keep population down" it's D&D. In any D&D setting you have wars, monster incursions, crazy magical catastrophes, the whole shebang; Joe Commoner's lifespan is limited less by the food he can bring in every year and more by the whims of the cackling necromancer who takes over his town.
Some places really are much harder to farm than others, if that's what you were disagreeing with.
Temperate-climate farming requires more foresight than tropical farming, for instance. Harvestable grain grew wild in Anatolia 8,000 years ago, and replanting was simple, but successful grain farming in far NW Europe is a lot tougher. Dairy farming requires different skills again (and a lot of hard work), and so on.Edit: And all crop farming was at close to subsistence level until recently. If you were lucky then 4 farming families might support 1 non-farming, but historically around 92 to 8 was more typical.
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Your approach is incompatible with Malthusian theory because you have farmers producing a vast surplus of food - 1sp/day is enough food to eat, 5sp for a family, but you're letting them roll Profession skill and produce ca 10-15gp worth of food each week! In this society only a minority will work the land, and by definition they will have the same income as craftsmen, since they all roll Profession skill to generate the same income. You have created something more resembling a 19th century western-European or north-American economy, not Renaissance.
It doesn't matter how good at farming they are (and how good you need to be varies a lot by environment), what matters is how much income you generate, in food to eat and sell. Those skilled modern subsistence farmers are producing around $1-2 a day in exchange terms, below even the 3e 1 silver piece standard. Although if their markets weren't flooded with cheap food from the USA and other developed countries, their produce would admittedly be worth substantially more, and on PPP is probably nearer $10, about 1 3e sp.
Eldritch_Lord
Adventurer
Holy triple post, Batman!
I was objecting to the statement that "the levels of skill involved in porterage and subsistence farming were comparable"--certainly the level of physical effort involved in digging holes, picking plants, etc. is similar, but being a farmer is much more than just sticking seeds in the ground and pulling up what grows there.
1) Malthusian theory ≠ "everyone is a subsistence farmer." His theory simply states that the population's demand on resources will inevitably outstrip their ability to produce it. That doesn't mean that on an individual level every farmer barely makes enough food to feed himself, it means that as time goes on Σ [total food output] < Σ [total food consumption] barring mitigating factors.
2) Farmers aren't producing 10-15gp worth of food each week, they're producing 10-15gp equivalent of wealth each week. That could mean he produced surplus food, or it could mean that the farmer fixes a broken fence that he'd otherwise have to pay someone to fix, or that adventurers sweep into town needing more supplies and he sells it at a markup, or whatever.
I wouldn't say 1 sp is about $10; it's harder to nail down prices than that. Take a look at the price of commodities today and compare to PHB prices. A bushel of wheat goes for about $319, or 319/60 = $5.30 per pound; 1 pound of wheat in D&D is 1 cp. Silver is going for about $36 per ounce, or 16*36 = $576 per pound; 1 pound of silver in D&D is 5 gp. Goats can cost between $100 and $300, so let's sat an average of $225; in D&D, a goat is 1 gp. In one case, we have 1 sp = $53, in another case we have 1 sp = $57...and in a third we have 1 sp = $22. Trying to equate D&D currency to real-world currency doesn't really work too well.
And again, the Profession rules don't mean you actually gain that many gold pieces at the end of the week, any more than a PC actually gets Xd4 gold pieces to start his career. When the subsistence farmer comes out with a net of $1-2, that's after he "buys" his meals, after he "buys" repairs to equipment, and so forth. Unskilled laborers make 1 sp per day and a day's worth of poor meals is 1 sp, so any subsistence farmer who can eat enough to survive and still have even a dollar left over to put away for a rainy day is coming out ahead of the unskilled laborer in income.
Some places really are much harder to farm than others, if that's what you were disagreeing with.
I was objecting to the statement that "the levels of skill involved in porterage and subsistence farming were comparable"--certainly the level of physical effort involved in digging holes, picking plants, etc. is similar, but being a farmer is much more than just sticking seeds in the ground and pulling up what grows there.
1) Malthusian theory ≠ "everyone is a subsistence farmer." His theory simply states that the population's demand on resources will inevitably outstrip their ability to produce it. That doesn't mean that on an individual level every farmer barely makes enough food to feed himself, it means that as time goes on Σ [total food output] < Σ [total food consumption] barring mitigating factors.
2) Farmers aren't producing 10-15gp worth of food each week, they're producing 10-15gp equivalent of wealth each week. That could mean he produced surplus food, or it could mean that the farmer fixes a broken fence that he'd otherwise have to pay someone to fix, or that adventurers sweep into town needing more supplies and he sells it at a markup, or whatever.
I wouldn't say 1 sp is about $10; it's harder to nail down prices than that. Take a look at the price of commodities today and compare to PHB prices. A bushel of wheat goes for about $319, or 319/60 = $5.30 per pound; 1 pound of wheat in D&D is 1 cp. Silver is going for about $36 per ounce, or 16*36 = $576 per pound; 1 pound of silver in D&D is 5 gp. Goats can cost between $100 and $300, so let's sat an average of $225; in D&D, a goat is 1 gp. In one case, we have 1 sp = $53, in another case we have 1 sp = $57...and in a third we have 1 sp = $22. Trying to equate D&D currency to real-world currency doesn't really work too well.
And again, the Profession rules don't mean you actually gain that many gold pieces at the end of the week, any more than a PC actually gets Xd4 gold pieces to start his career. When the subsistence farmer comes out with a net of $1-2, that's after he "buys" his meals, after he "buys" repairs to equipment, and so forth. Unskilled laborers make 1 sp per day and a day's worth of poor meals is 1 sp, so any subsistence farmer who can eat enough to survive and still have even a dollar left over to put away for a rainy day is coming out ahead of the unskilled laborer in income.
No, I think you're wrong - and I really think you need to rethink your economics if you're not going for a modern-world feel. The food he sells to the adventurers is income as normal. Mending the fence counts 0gp towards net income, that's an expense.
Of course he could be a commercial wool farmer, or flax etc. Is that what you're going for?
Your approach is post-Malthusian because you have a small proportion of the population producing more than enough food to feed the entire population. I don't see how you get around that? By having land in such short supply that a small number of farmers farm *all* the farmable land, with no additional food production possible?
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