D&D 5E Slaves - what they cost and why it matters

[IgnotumPAIgnotius]

It might help if we expanded the database on slaves, beyond early-era USA.


Anybody have documentation from Spanish Empire-era Latin America, or the Caribbean islands? Brazil?
Or other cultures / times where slavery was 'normal'? (Maybe something in the Code of Hammurabi?)

According the Code of Hammurabi, a slave was anyone who worked at another persons business, besides an apprentice. The most common reason for enslavement was running up a debt, or being a POW. Slavery generally lasted for a specified period of time. Slaves were payed wages, and could own property. Slavery did not extend to any relatives (wives and children were safe).

Besides that, when dealing with any topic, I think it is important to ask: What kind of story are you trying to tell, and why? Answering this could bring up other questions such as: Who is my audience? Especially when dealing with a subject as sensitive as slavery, it's important to think about these questions. In my opinion at least.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

Without the aid of magic or wings, if I step of a cliff in the Spine of the World (far north of Faerun), do I fall?

Yes, you do. And regardless of the height of the cliff, you reach the bottom and take damage in 6 seconds.

Trying to model physical reality in D&D leads to madness. Double so for economic reality.

 

[MechaPilot]

For my OOTA campaign I needed to get a handle on the value of slaves. It's a repugnant subject, but not one I believe we should avoid. Here is where I landed -

Slavery
Slavery is common in the Underdark, being most practiced by drow, duergar and fomorians. About 1/5 such creatures own on average 5 slaves, while 1/50 own on average 50. About 1/10 slaves are skilled, of whom 1/10 have tier 1 character-class equivalence. Old slaves are rare: most are young or adult. Slaves are priced on the basis of 2 years earnings from their labour.

Menzoberranzan (pop 20,000 free)
Type...........Slaves.........Usual Price
Unskilled......40,000.............150gp (based on 2sp earnings/day)
Skilled...........4,000...........1,500gp (based on 2gp earnings/day)
Tier 1...............400...........7,500gp (based on 10gp earnings/day)
Tier 2.................40........36,500gp (based on 50gp earnings/day)
Tier 3..................4.........priceless
Tier 4...............0-1.........priceless
Epic+..................0.........priceless

My assumptions are 1) based on large-scale slavery in the real world (US and UK) slaves are priced based on anticipated profits from their labour, 2) most slaves will remain in captivity for 5-10 years before dying or escaping, 2) owning a slave comes with costs and risks that more than halve their earnings for the purpose of calculating anticipated profits (hence they're valued on less than half their expected lifetime earnings). I based costs and earnings on PHB 157-159. I believe some readers are going to feel here that my values are too high so I'd like to explain why I believe it is important that they should be high. I based the slave population numbers on real world figures, bringing down the top end to reflect less efficient mythic-medieval logistics. Slaves are in addition to the free population, i.e. in 1479DR Menzoberranzan contains perhaps 60,000 sentient beings, 2/3rds of whom are slaves. I used my "order of magnitude fewer per tier" rule of thumb for slave skill levels. We know that there are at least some tier 1 or above slaves in Menzoberranzan Are there tier 3 or 4 slaves? As always that is up to each DM, but I feel we should raise the possibility: that could lead to interesting scenarios.

Your assumptions section doesn't state what interest rate you used to discount the future net income from the slave's labor to its net present value.

As it so happens, I've done some math here (big surprise from the tax accountant, I know).

An unskilled laborer earns 2 SP a day. PHB pg 159.

However, you also need to subtract the cost of living. While the conditions a slave lives in certainly qualifies as "inhumane," a term used to describe the wretched standard of living (PHB pg 158), the truth is that the remainder of the description fails to line up with what we'd expect for housing a slave. The squalid living condition (also PHB pg 158) is far more accurate, and that costs 1 SP a day.

So, we have a net income of 1 SP per day. And, that's ignoring any costs for hiring out the slave, or paying people to make sure the slave doesn't run away or otherwise try to fight for its freedom (perhaps by killing its owner).

Let's use your 10 year assumption for how long they can work. So, we have 1 SP per day, 365 days per year, for 10 years: that's 3,650 SP, or 365 GP.

But, that's future income. Now you have to discount that income stream. Since there really is no good way to determine the prevailing interest rate, our best bet is to use the desired rate of return as the discount rate so we can see what a willing buyer would pay in an arms'-length fair-market transaction.

Using the formula for the present value of an annuity, where the annual net income of 365 SP is the annual rents, 10 years is the number of periods, and 10% is the desired rate of return, we get 2,242.77 SP. That's a price of 224 GP, 2 SP, and 8 CP (actually 7.7 CP, but I rounded up). Which is actually equivalent to the PHB price for 4.5 draft horses (at 50 GP each). PHB pg 157.

To give that further perspective, examine that cost if paid in trade goods.
22,428 CP = 22,428 pounds of wheat. That's more than eleven tons of wheat!
22,428 CP = 4,485.6 pounds of salt. That's more than two tons of salt!
22,428 CP = 11,214 pounds of flour, or 11,214 chickens.
22,428 CP = 224 goats, or 112 sheep, or 112 pounds of cinnamon or pepper.
22,428 CP = 75 pigs.
22,428 CP = 15 oxen.
22,428 CP = an elephant and 1 mastiff (approximately).
22,428 CP = 448.4 pounds of copper, or 448.4 square yards of cotton cloth.

Edit: of course, all that changes if you tinker with the rate of return. And, naturally, rate of return is pegged to perceived risk of investment loss (escape, death, etc). So, it really wouldn't be outrageous for a buyer to expect a rate of return that would seem obscenely high to us in modern times. I could easily see a desire for a 25% to 50% rate of return being reasonable.

And, for the record, at increased levels of risk we're talking about the following prices:
20% = 15,302 CP
25% = 13,032 CP
30% = 11,284 CP
40% = 8,809 CP
50% = 7,173 CP

 

[Ancalagon]

You missed a detail breakdown one page back. You'll see that your figures are a bit low, based on multiple sources.

EDIT - page three already?! That break down is on page 1. (1sp is closer to 1 sestertii or 1/4 denari.)

I don't know how you reached the value of a Sestertii. First of all the price of a kg of gold seems wrong. But the current price of gold is, historically speaking, a bit of an abberation. I think it's a mistake to translate via "dollar" because it can introduce all sorts of wonky errors.

A dinari *is* a silver piece, of a reasonable size (4.5 gp before devaluation occurred gradually overtime - this is a problem for this kind of research). Historically the dinarri was worth 4 sestertii.

At 60 gp (or 600 sp) for an ordinary laborer, given that you have to feed the guy and other care (at say 1 sp/day), you are only saving 1 sp a day (at best). So it would take close to 2 years to recoup the "savings" from purchasing the slave.

Lastly, when you say that my figures are a bit low... do you mean my conclusion (gp value) or the starting value (price in sestertii)

 

[Sword of Spirit]

An unskilled laborer per PHB 159 earns 2sp/day. So working from 1 year's income, 730sp or 73gp = about 1000 sestertii

As an aside, the 250 days that the PHB suggests as the requirement to learn new tools/languages, comes out as about a year with weekends and a few holidays off. I mention it because it could also be interpreted to hint that a 5e yearly income (and living expenses) should be based on 250 days, which places yearly income at an even 50 gp.

 

[CapnZapp]

I'm not offended at all. As I said, it's not clear to me why people want it to be low?


I should have thought that a reason to try to improve them Also, I'm very much against the idea that if we can't fix everything we should fix nothing. I know you didn't say that - I just wanted to get it in before it came up.


Well, until recently people did rather enslave one another than tend to the crops themselves. Once our culture rejected slavery, other means came into play. Isn't this kind of the point of good-alignment? Non-evil characters should not want to enslave other sentient creatures even if it is profitable to do so. Just as they should not loot every settlement that lacks power to stop them. Alignment posits reasons beyond profit for doing or not doing something. You might say that on the question of slavery at least, our cultures became generally good aligned. I feel like the - if it is profitable, PCs will do it - argument doesn't work well.


I must have worded something more brusquely than intended. I value our opinions and always take them into account. When I say "argue" I almost invariably mean "present ideas" and "work stuff out".

Sorry for not chopping up big quote, on mobile here.

I would argue there were just as many people with good alignment back when slavery was practiced, even among actual slave-owners.

As for prices, I'm not even aware I have a want here. And to be honest, I don't see a big difference in the various price levels.

To me, you objected to my comparison between slaves and "other mundane goods", even though a warhorse fetches 400 gold, a huge sum for any commoner.

I'm not sure where the argument is, really.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

 

[IgnotumPAIgnotius]

I would argue there were just as many people with good alignment back when slavery was practiced, even among actual slave-owners.
EN World mobile app

If you're talking about old school code of Hammurabi slavery, maybe. If you're talking about American South type slavery, definitely not.

Owning another Human being is pretty morally repugnant in and of itself. Pile corporal punishment, substandard living conditions, and rape filled breeding programs on top of it.... I dunno man, I just think you have to be pretty confused inside to not understand why taking away another Humans freedom is bad. You'd have to be even more messed up to be okay with rape and dismemberment of other Humans too.

 

[CapnZapp]

If you're talking about old school code of Hammurabi slavery, maybe. If you're talking about American South type slavery, definitely not.

Owning another Human being is pretty morally repugnant in and of itself. Pile corporal punishment, substandard living conditions, and rape filled breeding programs on top of it.... I dunno man, I just think you have to be pretty confused inside to not understand why taking away another Humans freedom is bad. You'd have to be even more messed up to be okay with rape and dismemberment of other Humans too.

Before we get all worked up, I was taking the highly theoretical stand-point that there must have been good-aligned people even during ancient times, when slavery was ubiquitous and uncontroversial (or rather, unchallenged). It's a philosophical-logical conundrum: could there have been goodness in the world even when slavery was widespread? My answer is yes; we cannot blame individuals at that time for not taking modern views on slavery.

A slaveowner could treat his slaves badly. But he could also treat his slaves well (relatively speaking). But I feel it's taking our modern sensibilities too far to demand that any Greek or African or Roman or Viking slaveowner must, say, free his slaves or be disqualified from a good alignment.

I won't respond to most of your comments. I'm not arguing "slavery is good" or any of that crap. So let's not let the discussion go down the toilet.

 

[IgnotumPAIgnotius]

Before we get all worked up, I was taking the highly theoretical stand-point that there must have been good-aligned people even during ancient times, when slavery was ubiquitous and uncontroversial (or rather, unchallenged).

I would argue that slavery was never uncontroversial or unchallenged. History is full of revolts and political discord around this issue. The pro-slavery side generally had the upper hand in most places until a few hundred years ago.

A slaveowner could treat his slaves badly. But he could also treat his slaves well (relatively speaking). But I feel it's taking our modern sensibilities too far to demand that any Greek or African or Roman or Viking slaveowner must, say, free his slaves or be disqualified from a good alignment.

Like i said, the system of slavery you're referring to matters a lot. Enslavement 2000 years ago in Europe and Africa, was very dissimilar from the slavery of the American South 200 years ago. In my experience when people put slavery in their games or stories they more closely resemble the most extreme examples of slavery such as American slavery, rather than ancient slavery.

 

[CapnZapp]

Okay then.