D&D 5E Goodberries and Eberron

[tetrasodium]

Keith has indicated that ExE will have his own set of lightning rail prices, which makes me think we'll get some daily life expectations content to sort through this argument.

That will be good, I'd like to see a lot of the economic stuff I was hoping would be in mormisc in that. It makes a lot of sense for lightning rail routes to be structured a lot like how airlines use hub airports* where you might walk or take a horse/coach to a nearby city big enough to justify a lightning rail stop & spend the night because there's only a 0-3 lightning rail stops a day with the next one being two days out for really ass end of nowhere stops, then take that train somewhere you can transfer to a sharn (or where ever) bound train. Something that becomes extremely apparent if you start looking at the lightning rails lines in Rising though is that they pretty much only connect capitol cities & cities that happen to be close enough with basically(literally?) no branch/spur lines unless the gm drops them in or the players decide that becoming short line railroad tycoons will be interesting

* busses & trains do too, but not to the extent they are visible beyond localish maps & trains aren't as significant a factor in travel as they were a hundred+ years ago

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Keith has indicated that ExE will have his own set of lightning rail prices, which makes me think we'll get some daily life expectations content to sort through this argument.

That would be good, even if I am pretty sure it's a lot of work to come up with coherent pricing indications just to satisfy a afew detail-obsessed players in this exciting setting.

I mean I think it makes at least as much sense to conclude that the daily income numbers in the PHB simply don’t apply to Eberron, but if you stick to those numbers, sure.

I'd like to keep consistency, but I am happy to make some changes where I can't reconcile the data (for example, Sharn can't be 10 times less populated than mid-19th century London so I discard canon). Even if we conclude the PHB data to be inconsistent with the Eberron setting, the informations coming from the Eberron Campaign Guide (p. 62, Hiring Help) indicates that :

Adventurers seeking to hire help in Sharn, on either a short-term or a long-term basis, should begin in the adventurers’ quarters of Clifftop in Upper Dura and Deathsgate in Middle Tavick’s Landing. For about 1 sp per day (more for highly trained professionals, less for common laborers), adventurers can hire an individual to perform one of an enormous variety of services, from tending horses to representing the characters in court.

Strikingly, unskilled labor is even less paid in Sharn than in the PHB. Meanwhile, the Eberron Campaign Setting listed daily hired help from a least dragonmarked employee at 12 gp a day. That's a 120-fold difference in revenue... even if the house itself captures most of this income, the pricing supports extreme wealth unequalities. With regard to healing, House Jorasco is selling (at a discount) casting of a 1st level healing spell at 8 gp. They also offer hospital service at 7 sp a day, covering mundane use of the heal skill. (ECS, page 121 and 124). If everyone was able to afford the spell when injured, mundane service would have mostly gotten out of business, but as stated by the guide "few can regularly afford that expensive service". Same with mending, with the guide saying that recruiting a magewright to mend an item is usually more expensive than outright replacing the item...

Disclaimer: I haven't (yet) read the 5th edition's book so most of my information may be off.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

That would be good, even if I am pretty sure it's a lot of work to come up with coherent pricing indications just to satisfy a afew detail-obsessed players in this exciting setting.



I'd like to keep consistency, but I am happy to make some changes where I can't reconcile the data (for example, Sharn can't be 10 times less populated than mid-19th century London so I discard canon). Even if we conclude the PHB data to be inconsistent with the Eberron setting, the informations coming from the Eberron Campaign Guide (p. 62, Hiring Help) indicates that :



Strikingly, unskilled labor is even less paid in Sharn than in the PHB. Meanwhile, the Eberron Campaign Setting listed daily hired help from a least dragonmarked employee at 12 gp a day. That's a 120-fold difference in revenue... even if the house itself captures most of this income, the pricing supports extreme wealth unequalities. With regard to healing, House Jorasco is selling (at a discount) casting of a 1st level healing spell at 8 gp. They also offer hospital service at 7 sp a day, covering mundane use of the heal skill. (ECS, page 121 and 124). If everyone was able to afford the spell when injured, mundane service would have mostly gotten out of business, but as stated by the guide "few can regularly afford that expensive service". Same with mending, with the guide saying that recruiting a magewright to mend an item is usually more expensive than outright replacing the item...

Disclaimer: I haven't (yet) read the 5th edition's book so most of my information may be off.

Right, and my point is that almost none of that actually makes any sense, and so if we want a sensible setting we have to build the economics with not regard to what’s balanced for the PCs, and work from there.

Take Mending. That is a pretty standard Magewright service. But it literally cannot be if the majority of people can hardly ever afford the service, and it’s usually less expensive to just replace the item.

So, what, we somehow have dirt poor commoners, goods that are disposable enough that replacement is cheaper than repair, and an industry/industries of Magewrights and other such professionals that somehow supports a growing middle class?

Complete and utter nonsense.

At some point, one either has to accept that Eberron’s demographics and economics are complete nonsense and move on, or recreate more sensible demographics and economics.

 

[Leatherhead]

So, what, we somehow have dirt poor commoners, goods that are disposable enough that replacement is cheaper than repair, and an industry/industries of Magewrights and other such professionals that somehow supports a growing middle class?

What part of that is hard to believe? The economy operates at different levels you know.

There will always be dirt poor commoners. Having cheep disposable goods instead of repairable ones only makes their problems worse. They can't own land, and any other property that they buy rapidly loses value as soon as it walks out of the store, which means they are constantly throwing money into pits instead of being able to invest in anything.

The expanding middle class is due to a postwar boom. You have all the solders with extra money in their bank accounts, massive depopulation and infrastructure damage that devalued land values (which redirects wealth from the upper/ruling classes downward), the aforementioned disposable goods are redirecting wealth upward from the lower classes. And most importantly, there is just a bunch of wealth that used to be directed at the war efforts just sitting around waiting to be invested in something else.

Magewrights don't have to be hired directly by the poor to be a growing Industry. They could be hired by the government or a House to service a community. Though more likely they are going to be hired by the growing middle class.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

What part of that is hard to believe? The economy operates at different levels you know.

There will always be dirt poor commoners. Having cheep disposable goods instead of repairable ones only makes their problems worse. They can't own land, and any other property that they buy rapidly loses value as soon as it walks out of the store, which means they are constantly throwing money into pits instead of being able to invest in anything.

The expanding middle class is due to a postwar boom. You have all the solders with extra money in their bank accounts, massive depopulation and infrastructure damage that devalued land values (which redirects wealth from the upper/ruling classes downward), the aforementioned disposable goods are redirecting wealth upward from the lower classes. And most importantly, there is just a bunch of wealth that used to be directed at the war efforts just sitting around waiting to be invested in something else.

Magewrights don't have to be hired directly by the poor to be a growing Industry. They could be hired by the government or a House to service a community. Though more likely they are going to be hired by the growing middle class.

Lol no, that doesn’t make sense. You can support a middle class but only the rich and middle class paying for their services. A middle class develops when there is an ability for the poor to buy more goods and pay for more services. A middle class requires a rising tide.

What’s more, the idea there will always be extremely poor people in a given society only works comparative to others in that society. In the modern USA, literally only the homeless and people in less than a dozen total dying towns across the enormous geography of the nation could be called genuinely poor by a global standard. They are extremely poor by comparison to others in their society, though.

Likewise, Eberron’s economy only makes sense if the “poor” are better off than the poor of the RL Middle Ages Europe.

 

[Leatherhead]

lol no, that doesn’t make sense. You can support a middle class but only the rich and middle class paying for their services.

Oh, you think that magewritghts are the only/primary middle-class job. I thought you meant support as in "They are a service industry to all the other middle class jobs" Yeah, that interpretation doesn't make any sense.

A middle class develops when there is an ability for the poor to buy more goods and pay for more services. A middle class requires a rising tide.

That's literally what the postwar economy did.

 

[tetrasodium]

Lol no, that doesn’t make sense. You can support a middle class but only the rich and middle class paying for their services. A middle class develops when there is an ability for the poor to buy more goods and pay for more services. A middle class requires a rising tide.

What’s more, the idea there will always be extremely poor people in a given society only works comparative to others in that society. In the modern USA, literally only the homeless and people in less than a dozen total dying towns across the enormous geography of the nation could be called genuinely poor by a global standard. They are extremely poor by comparison to others in their society, though.

Likewise, Eberron’s economy only makes sense if the “poor” are better off than the poor of the RL Middle Ages Europe.

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”

― Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms: The Play

There are a few types of poor... A Working poor who are above the poverty line & below middle class... B poor people who are at or below the poverty line but have a roof over their head & aren't especially worried about missing a meal even if it happens sometimes... C and the wretched poor refugee type. FR & Greyhawk don't really have a middle class to speak of, but they have lots of the first two o & few of the last. Eberron has a surplus of the last due to the war & a good number of the first two but those in A are either recently knocked down from middle class or better & working back that way or young folks making their way. Those in the last group in eberron are literal refugees & the victims of generational poverty existing in a barter trade outside the economy proper that shuns them.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Oh, you think that magewritghts are the only/primary middle-class job. I thought you meant support as in "They are a service industry to all the other middle class jobs" Yeah, that interpretation doesn't make any sense.

No. The middle class, regardless of how they are made up, must be producing goods and services that all three socio-economic groups can afford.

Capitalist societies are driven primarily by poor and middle class spending, but the middle class can’t do it alone, it has to be middle class AND poor spending.

And most middle class vocations are magewrights or equivalent. Ie, blacksmiths and cobblers are trained in a guild structure that generally includes minor magical training.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

For what it's worth, magewrights of all categories represent 1% of the adult workforce, according to Keith Baker's old post here : Dragonshards -- Magic in Eberron: Magewrights

The DM should bear this potential for magic in mind when creating scenes in an Eberron game, especially in a major metropolis or large town. An artisan producing masterwork materials may use magecraft to enhance her work, and the tailor could use mending for especially difficult jobs. Magic is a part of life in the Five Nations. Magewrights make up approximately 1% of the adult workforce, and their spells should be seen in action on a regular basis.

So, they (as a group covering all sort of widespread magic ranging from healing to innkeeping to mending...) are as prevalent as lawyers in the US. Which means they are common but not everyone is one and many people could spend their whole lives not ever seeing one. Unless you live in a big metropolis, where they (most probably) gather and your chances of meeting them is increased.

I wouldn't put them into the "middle class" since they are comparetely rare and with highly sought-after skills.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

For what it's worth, magewrights of all categories represent 1% of the adult workforce, according to Keith Baker's old post here : Dragonshards -- Magic in Eberron: Magewrights



So, they (as a group covering all sort of widespread magic ranging from healing to innkeeping to mending...) are as prevalent as lawyers in the US. Which means they are common but not everyone is one and many people could spend their whole lives not ever seeing one. Unless you live in a big metropolis, where they (most probably) gather and your chances of meeting them is increased.

I wouldn't put them into the "middle class" since they are comparetely rare and with highly sought-after skills.

Yeah, that is wildly at odds with the impression given by descriptions of towns and cities in Eberron.

I really think Eberron is just a world where literally no wordlbuilding numbers match the tone and description of the world, and are thus best ignored.