D&D 3E/3.5 3rd Edition Revisited - Better play with the power of hindsight?

[Thomas Shey]

But I don't accept that as given: See below.

The assumptions I'm making are:
1. The median income for characters of Nth level is N-squared gp per day. That applies to NPCs and NPC-class NPCs as well as to PCs and retired PCs. I drop the conceit that "1 gp is big money! Enough for an average 1st level NPC to live on for a week or more!"

I don't see any reason a PC has to follow that rule. That's at best a social construct, and PCs break those all the time. At a certain point luxury for luxury's sake is only what a subset of people who want money want; others happy to get enough and quit, and they can exceed what they'd make in mundane life as a PC relatively early.

Basically, I don't much care what the game theoretically tells you people of X level will want; it also tells you what various things cost, and you can cover pretty good ones much earlier and cheaper than those listed costs.

Now the "by the book" D&D background material tries to force the contradiction of D&D being simultaneously a Realm of Golden Glamor & Wealth and a Dung Age Place. If you really want to keep the second part, with its conceit of "1gp is enough for a 1st level peasant to live on for a week, 10 days, or even two weeks" then that calls for cutting my assumed figures by a factor of 10. And then yes, the wealth required to retire "rich" is cut down to something obtainable by a 5th level character with only a little more wealth grubbing than normal for 5th level adventuring.

And that's exactly my view.

But I find "1gp is a lot of wealth, in the mundane sense" to be an assumption that unnecessarily makes already-crazy D&D economics even more so. My judgment, my aesthetic sense - my taste, if you will - says to drop that assumption and so make things slightly less crazy.

That's your choice, but I'm talking about the listed prices, not what makes the economy make sense. The D&D economy has never made sense. As I said, I'm talking about what's already there.

 

[James Gasik]

We are talking about a game where you could buy a ladder and sell it as a pair of 10' poles to make a profit, right? I don't think a critical examination of how wealth works in 3.x is going to get anyone anywhere. The WBL rules exist as an attempt (not really a great one, sadly) to balance characters. It shouldn't be taken as representative of how actual wealth would function in-universe, because that way lies madness.