Average income of a social class?

[Oryan77]

I think it would depend greatly upon the particular setting you are running, and what the various cultures are like within that setting.

I think it depends on your setting and how closely you want to model it on historical periods. It also depends on the kind of economy you envision in your setting.

To make it as straight forward as possible, I figure it is easiest to assume it is a vanilla D&D setting based off of any normal cost of items in the D&D books and any info based on making money (craft, profession, entertaining, etc etc). If you were using information based off of the PHB & DMG, then what would a person earn to fit in each "typical" social class.

As for various cultures, just assume it is the most generic culture with the most generic standards of living among each social class. Poor people are obviously poor, middle class is obviously doing ok, rich people are living the good life.

Of course there is no right or wrong answer. I'm just curious to see what people think.

 

[S'mon]

I think in terms of what I've seen heroes in campaigns make over the course of their adventuring lives. For example in my most recent 4E campaign you see heroes buying items that are like 150,000 - 400,000 gold pieces per item at epic levels.

They're buying items in the City of Brass in the Elemental Chaos though, not in a mortal kingdom - at least per standard 4e D&D.

 

[haakon1]

Simon and Jack7, your posts are just awesome.

Sadly, I think too many things you write are awesome, so I can't give either of you more XP.

BTW, it might be interesting to read up on academic theories about (British, naturally) class:

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

For medieval and early modern UK:

Cottagers and labourers -- Cottagers were a step below husbandmen, in that they had to work for others for wages. Lowest order of the working castes; perhaps vagabonds, drifters, criminals or other outcasts would be lower.

Husbandman (or other tradesmen) -- A tradesman or farmer who either rented a home or owned very little land was a husbandman. In ancient feudal times, this person likely would have been a serf, and paid a large portion of his work or produce to the land-holding lord.

Yeoman -- The yeoman class generally included small farmers who held a reasonable amount of land and were able to protect themselves from neighbouring lords et cetera. They played a military role as longbowmen. Sometimes Merchant citizens are placed between Yeoman and Gentry in early modern social hierarchy.


Gentry/Gentleman -- The gentry by definition held enough assets to live on rents without working, and so could be well educated. If they worked it was in law, as priests, in politics, or in other educated pursuits without manual labour. The term Esquire was used for landowners who were not knighted. Many gentry families were armigerous and of ancient lineage possessing great wealth and large estates.

Knight -- The definition of a knight depends upon the century in which the term was applied. In very early medieval times a knight was a common soldier; later as cavalry became more important the knight's role became more associated with wealth. By the seventeenth century a knight was a senior member of the gentry, and the military role would be one of sheriff of a county, or organizing a larger body of military forces, or in civil service exercising judicial authority. He was a large land owner, and his younger sons would often be lawyers, priests, or officials of some sort.

Baronet (hereditary, non peer) -- A baronet held a hereditary style of knighthood, giving the highest rank below a peerage.

Peer (Noble/Archbishop) -- The peers were generally large land holders, living solely off assets, sat in the House of Lords and either held court or played a role in court depending upon the time frame referenced.

Modern class in the UK (perhaps easier for the modern audience to grok):

Grade Occupation
A Higher managerial, administrative or professional
B Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
C1 Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional
C2 Skilled manual workers
D Semi and unskilled manual workers
E Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners and others who depend on the state for their income

I believe I'd be Grade B now, but my ancestors were cottagers.

 

[S'mon]

Of course there is no right or wrong answer. I'm just curious to see what people think.

Your numbers seem similar to mine, maybe a bit lower. I tend to start with an individual in temperate climes needing several cp/day worth of food just to stay alive, so the price of chickens is increased IMCs. You don't really support a family of 5 IMCs with a gross domestic product of 1 sp/day, that would be starvation level. Instead 1 sp is the minimum to support a healthy labouring male, for a peasant family you're looking at ca 2.5 sp/day. As starting point I use a medieval-ish paradigm (pre Black Death), where many people can never afford to marry & have children - the landless labourer, the maid in service, etc. This makes sense of the very low wages given in pre-4e sources.

However on the frontier where people are scarce and land is abundant, wages will often be higher - a labourer at the Loudwater docks (FR) might make 2-3 sp/day when the ships come in; perhaps enough to support a poor family.

Points of Light economies are strange though - you have a small population, but land is constrained because the wilderness beyond the close-patrol zone of the fortified strongpoint (Fallcrest, Loudwater) is too dangerous for settlement. Population then grows within the PoL until constrained by resource scarcity; people within it will be poor, most at the 1sp/day level. Fringing the PoL is a liminal zone of marginal settlement where land is available to the desperate or brave, but frequent monster attack constantly threatens the farms/hamlets/villages. PC activity may drive back the darkness, creating a temporary boomlet as the settled zone around the PoL expands; the PoL's mini-frontier rolls forward. Or monster threats may increase and roll forward, driving back the mini-frontier, possibly even extinguishing the PoL.

 

[S'mon]

Knight -- The definition of a knight depends upon the century in which the term was applied. In very early medieval times a knight was a common soldier; later as cavalry became more important the knight's role became more associated with wealth. By the seventeenth century a knight was a senior member of the gentry, and the military role would be one of sheriff of a county, or organizing a larger body of military forces, or in civil service exercising judicial authority. He was a large land owner, and his younger sons would often be lawyers, priests, or officials of some sort.

This is spot on, and I find that the social status of the Knight is a particular source of confusion & difficulty in the typical D&D multi-period mish-mash.

The origin of the knight is as the armed retainer of the pre-feudal war chief; the warriors who slept and drank in the chief's hall. Only perceived legitimacy distinguishes these 'knights' from the brigand or pirate! 'Knight' means 'retainer' BTW; in other languages words for 'Horseman' are used - Ritter, Chevalier.

The Norman 'knight' who you might see getting bushwhacked by Robin Hood is still close to this pre-feudal origin, but now he rides a horse, is reliably outfitted in mail armour, and has more the air of a professional soldier. He might be a step above the shortbow archer, and a big step above peasant levies, but he's still essentially a common warrior. A 'castle guard' is indistinguishable from a 'knight'.

Then as the centuries passed the Lords began distributing their knights around their manors, in the high medieval the knight becomes the petty-lord of a small village. Professional & semi-professional infantry re-emerge as eg Billmen, in this transitional period you start getting the professional soldier who is a man-at-arms but possibly not a knight; towards the end a 'castle guard' is a 'man at arms' who is not a knight, knights become too posh for that sort of thing.

In the late period, knighthood with its duties becomes unpopular, in England knights are increasingly rare; yeomen now provide the core of the military caste. Where they do appear they're an elite, heavily armoured minor nobility in field plate, riding a destrier. In France with its greater population and greater wealth, knights remain the core of the battle-force for much longer.

 

[S'mon]

So, following on from that, knights in game terms - when you know what sort of knight you're dealing with, then you can stat them appropriately.

BECMI D&D assumes a late-15th century model with knights a rare elite; in that game Knights are all 9th level or higher Fighters. This works for something like 'A Knight's Tale' or the plate-armoured Arthurian knights of the movie 'Excaibur'. In AD&D these knights might be ca 5th-8th level. The 4e D&D MM2 'Cavalier' is a 7th level soldier who follows this model.

If your setting is more 13th century then knights will be more common, and the baseline knight will be lower level. In AD&D ca 3rd level looks about right. In my 'Ea' campaign world, for 4e I statted the hordes of 'mook' knights as 8th level minions.

And if your setting is more Norman early-medieval, then the classic '1st level Fighter' PC or NPC makes a very appropriate 'knight'; for 4e a knight NPC may be a baseline 1st level soldier or maybe 6th level minion if you use level+5 rather than retaining XPV.

 

[RedTonic]

The RPGA adventures have this information in the little intro included with each, actually. I don't know if that stuff is legal to simply post up here. I use it in my games.

I'm assuming you're going for 3.x/PF as well. I don't know how wealth compares between 3.x and 4e.

 

[Janx]

Here is my attempt at coming up with an average based on what housing costs are in the 3.5 DMG. These amounts are what a family would earn a year (net income). It is not a representation of overall wealth.

I would use a similar methdology. Look at housing costs and assume renting it or paying mortgage as approximately the same. I'd also look at the food costs, and use that as the minimal baseline for a non-starving poor person.

Thus, a serf might pay no rent or taxes (because they own nothing), but be paid money so they can buy food. That food would be the meagerest, but would set a baseline for a poor, but not starving person.

In modern times, a bank would loan out 2-3 times your annual salary for a mortgage. You could use that as guesstimate by quality of house the person lived in. I'm not sure if real medieval banks would loan out that much for a house, but the concept is workable in terms of guesstimating wealth.

You can also work out that the farther back you go, food costs were a larger percentage of income (less spare money for extra stuff). Additionally, that ratio has always been worse for the poor, compared to the wealthy.

So a cross test of the math is that the % of expense to income should be higer overall and the gap would be larger, the higher the income.

From the d20srd.org:
a poor meal is 1sp

So a poor man with no rent needs 1sp/day so he gets 1 meal a day.
if he rents a room or shanty, that's 2sp/day.
Grand total 3sp/day, or 90sp/month or 1095sp/year

That is for a poor guy with a daily meal and a roof over his head to call home.

Any less than that, and he's starving or does not have a dedicated place to call home (sleeps where he can).

A man with a family is going to need to make more. A man looking to move up (better meals, home, family) is going to need to make more so he can save up, etc.

Luckily, the SRD also shows us that a trained hireling gets at least 3sp/day. This means the lowest paid trained hireling is POOR.

An untrained hireling at 1sp/day is basically mooching off his master for shelter, because he's only getting enough for 1 meal/day.

A guy who can cast a 0th/level spell per day (as in enough demand for) is cranking out 5gp and would be doing quite well.

A Messenger makes 2cp/mile. He need to go 5 miles to hit meal time. 15 miles/day to hit meal+rent. Unless he can get paid going both ways, he's only getting paid every other day. Average walking speed is 4 miles/hour. In an 8 hour work day he's got 32 miles. That's 6.4sp/day. Not bad for a walking job. Obviously, if he's running (short distances, more jobs?) he'll make even more.

If you want the good lifestyle (based on the Inn cost of 2sp+5sp), you'll need 7sp day per family member. The messenger could rock close enough for himself.

Anybody else, the SRD just doesn't offer enough diversity for job classifications. And there's a broad jump in unit of measure for hirelings paid in silver, to a low-level caster doing 0th level spells at 5gp a hit.*

*actually more than that as its times caster level, and the pay-worthy spells are at least 1st level.

This actually reveals a different disparity. Folks talk about casting the Create Food and Drink spell and be rolling in the bucks. That spell costs more to have it cast than to just buy the actual food at 5sp/person.

 

[haakon1]

In my campaign, Knighthood is something like modern British knighthood. That is, it's an honor for service to the realm, or to a noble, and it doesn't come with any particular duties or income.

There's a knight in my campaign. He's a monk of Rao, who single-handedly (he had a horse with Horseshoes of Speed, so he got there first) helped the rabble militia of a small village hold off a major raid by orcs and werewolves, taking on the werewolves himself and driving them off. The local Baronet knighted him for saving the villagers. (In my campaign in Bissel, there are only two layers of nobility -- the Margrave, who rules the palatine (independent) March of Bissel, and 26 baronets, who in Bissel are called Lord, not Sir.) He was 8th level (3.5e) when he was knighted.

There's another PC who is likely to get a knighthood soon. She pleased a general in the Margrave's standing forces (the Border Companies) and is getting much of the credit for the party's action in stopping another Baronet from attempting secession. She'll be made a Knight of the Watch, a order of knighthood that will ask her to do missions on occassion, but will mostly let her continue to adventure. Their goal -- protecting Bissel and neighboring lands from "barbarians" on the other side of the mountains, giants, etc. -- very much aligns with what she and party do already. She'll be 7th level (3.5e) when knighted.

In another campaign in the same setting, I have a paladin who was "sir" from the start (1st level), just because he's from a noble family, not for any great deeds to his name yet. He was originally an NPC (from the Sunless Citadel), and was a "Sir" in that source.

 

[RedTonic]

After thinking about it a couple days, I remembered that I actually had these as house rules in my campaign. Goes to show how often this actually comes up in my game, heh. I believe these are modified enough from the RPGA materials from whence I derived them to be share-able (but mods, please let me know if it's not okay). I found those materials pretty useful for helping me iron out the rough expected lifestyles of the various castes in my setting.




Destitute: You have no living space, and must carry all your gear everywhere. You eat poor quality food, mainly scavenged from settlements and stolen from farms and gardens. You wear a peasant outfit, your only change of clothes.

Poor: You sleep in poor accommodations, and eat poor quality food with almost no meat. You wear a peasant outfit, and have two sets of clothing.

Common: You have common lodgings, and eat common quality food. You have normal clothing for your profession; nothing fancy. You probably have two or three sets of clothing, one of which is somewhat higher quality and kept for worship services and holy days.

Well-Off: You have better than average lodgings and eat good quality food. You have normal clothing for your profession, of good make and quality. You have several sets of clothing, and may buy another outfit every month or so. You are restricted by sumptuary laws in what you can wear, but you can afford quality.

Wealthy: You stay in good quality lodgings, and eat good quality food. You wear anything in value up to courtier’s outfits, and generally buy a new set of clothing every two weeks. Due to your social status, there are fewer sumptuary laws restricting your consumption and mode of dress.

Noble Luxury: You have luxurious accommodations (twice the cost of good accommodations), and you eat excellent foods. You can throw a banquet for your friends every day, and frequently do. You wear clothing up to the value of noble’s outfit, and buy a new set of clothes every week. You are subject to less legal restriction in what you can own or wear, but you are more mindful of intricacies these laws and in what you can wear to reflect your social status.

Lifestyle Monthly Cost
Destitute 14 silver
Poor 43 silver
Common 12 gold
Well-Off 75 gold
Wealthy 250 gold
Luxurious 500 gold