Still the relation does not fit, how do you fail to see this?
It's not that I don't see it. I think obviously I must see some issues in the economy of Eberron in particular and D&D in general in order to start and engage in this conversation. But I think maybe we are focused on different aspects of the problem, or different (but related) problems altogether. We also may be coming in with different assumptions that color our perspectives.
People sometimes where in the plight to buy themselves a weapon to serve as an emergency militia.
Let us take a battle axe, although somewhat more expensive than a woodcutter axe its make is quite similar.
It is 10g as per PHB equivalent of 1000 $
Let us asume a woodcutters axe costs half of it then it would be 500$. Back then it was handcrafted, but labor was much cheaper, so it is comparable with todays price which would be some 20 - 30 $ at the toolstore most. And today you got all intermediate sellers taking their share etc.
So I see things a bit differently here.
1) I would assume that most people don't have martial training, especially in a volunteer or emergency militia. So I don't think they would be using a battleaxe due to lack of proficiency.
2) More likely, an emergency militia wouldn't have time to purchase or commission weapons. They would be repurposing tools that they already have access to for weapons. Clubs, woodaxes, pitchforks, ect. According to the PHB, if an object looks like or functions similar to a an existing weapon, a character could treat it as such, including proficiency (if they have it) and damage. So tools could be used in place of nearly any simple weapon.
3) I would say tools are
much less expensive than weapons, even ones that are similar to weapons. From my perspective, a woodcutter's axe is different enough from a battleaxe that it wouldn't be half as much, as you suggest, but a tenth the price. Now I'm no weapons expert or anything, but my gut tells me that while lots of weapons could be used as tools, you would not want to use your weapons as tools. Could a battleaxe chop wood in a pinch? Sure. Is the soldier going to ruin their weapon if they cut too much wood with it? Probably. Would a woodcutter want one to use professionally? Doubtful. And that goes vice versa as well. Tools and weapons can be similar, but they aren't the same. Once again, not an expert, but I imagine that they are weighted differently, made to sustain forces differently, and have different maintenance requirements.
20 arrows 1gp! Are they mad???
Yea, that probably is too much for the economy perspective of the game. But I see this as important for game balance. We often see on these boards the arguments of the superiority of dexterity and ranged weapons. And one of the ways this should be balanced is by the fact that ranged attacks should have a limited shelf-life before that archer has to wade into combat like the other grunts around them. But 1 gp for 20 arrows isn't breaking the bank for the PCs either, so I see it as a compromise that fails on both ends.
But the solution is totally simple just make it silver for all the weapons and armor instead of gold and everything fits together once more.
A maul 10gp = 1000$! That is a simple tool, english longbowmen took these along to build their tents and its second use was to crack open the plate armor of a downed mounted knight.
Every archer would be like "oh i grab the big hammer, desert, sell it of and then i am a rich man for the next months"
Edit here is a cite from myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.25025.html by a James Barker:
15th C England basically went like this:
You had "li, s, d" or "pounds, shillings, and pence". 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings, or 240 pence, in a pound.
Average sword was a pound.
Average person made 2 pence a day; so 120 days of labor for a sword.
Skilled Labor could make 4-6d a day, someone like a stone mason.
Archers made 6d a day on campaign so 40 days of campaigning for a sword.
Helmet cost about the same.
a pound is 20 shilling = 20 silver =1g (historical), so a sword was 1g which is far nearer to my 15s than your and PHBs 15g
The average labor is even cheaper, but skilled labour is about 2-3x what phb states for unskilled so my guess was also good here.
Even assuming that your source is accurate, as you are citing a forum post, this seems to contradict your argument above:
also
@Hawk Diesel i did get the 100gp from not looking it up. But that does not matter. 15gp officially is 150sp is 75 days of unskilled labor. A smith is skilled so he takes 2-5 times of that and needs one day for the sword so plus material and profit your sword comes to realistic 15sp and that's the way I do it in my campaign.
it is not about the absolute numbers what makes the phb prices so unrealistic it's about the relation.
By your own estimate, by the PHB standard it requires about 75 days of unskilled labor to afford the average martial weapon. Based on your source, the average skilled laborer made 5 pence a day which required 48 days of labor for a sword (a sword costing 1 pound, or 240 pence, thus 240 pence divided by 5 pence earned in a day of labor). Your citation doesn't state the kind of sword. Assuming a shortsword is the most common kind of sword (valued at 10 gp, or 100 silver), it would take a skilled laborer 50 days of labor to purchase based on the PHB. Your source lines up very nicely with the prices listed in the PHB by the gold value.
EDIT: Actually, I made a mistake. Per the PHB, a skilled laborer earns 2 gp per day. This means a skilled laborer would have enough to buy a shortsword in 5 days, whereas in your source cited above, a similarly skilled laborer would require almost 10 times that amount in labor to afford a sword. This would indicate that it is far more affordable for someone living in an RPG to buy a weapon than it was in the real world in medieval times.