Average income of a social class?

[Celebrim]

To begin with, S'mon, you entire post is infused with the assumption that I don't know anything about medieval economies. Please, start from the assumption that I am in every way describing a medieval baseline and see where that gets you.

In a pre-modern setting, of course the peasant can't slap down 100gp and buy a hovel!

If hovels were a mere 100gp, I'd have less of a problem with that. Still some problem but much less of one. That implies only that a hovel requires 6000-10000 man days of labor to create. The problem is that typically, because buildings are always priced according to the gold peice encomy, simple hovels are priced at like 1000gp implying that something like 60,000-100,000 man days of labor go into them. Even we assume skilled labor and its higher costs, we are still left with hovels that take a team of 10 men at least 6-7 years to build.

I mean, I'm well aware of the longer craft times required for hand made goods and the proportionately higher percentages of income required therefore to purchase any durable goods. But do the math. If you price things in gold, and you price labor in silver, you are always left with tremendous absurdities. I have no problem with complex goods taking days or weeks to make, but often this is ridiculous. A masterwork sword might well require a months labor, but a simple sword (or a longbow) is the work of only a couple of days at most.

...if the PCs do throw money around by hiring vast numbers of people, that's when inflation can kick in; hireling costs will go up.

Certainly. But if you are going to assume that inflation kicks in as soon as the PCs start buying, and thereafter rejigger the whole price list, why not instead build the assumptions of PC wealth into the economy so that history doesn't illogically begin with the existance of the PC's?

Besides which, this inflation assumption is utterly ridiculous and has been the ridiculous basis of so many bad pricing schemes since D&D was published. To explain why, we must go back to 1e. Let me 'read' you something:

Your characters will most probably be adventuring in an area where money is plentiful. Think of the situation as similar to Alaskan boom towns during the gold rush days, when eggs sold for one dollar each and mining tools sold for $20, $50, and $100 or more! Costs in the adventuring area are distorted by supply and demand - the supply of coins is high, while supplies of equipment for the adventurers are in great demand.

In other words, the table of equipment costs in the 1e Player's Handbook already is justified by the fact that Gygax knows that these costs represent as inflated of a pricing scheme as he can think of. In other words, Gygax is justifying the dual economy of ordinary goods supplied in silver peices, but adventuring supplies bought in gold peices by explaining that all the adventuring supplies are being bought in a place equivalent to Dawson during the Klondike gold rush. So it always amusing me and infuriates me at turns to see people bring out the inflation argument, or suggest that adventuring supplies cost two or three times that listed in the players handbook because of the extremities of inflation. Those people are unknowingly (I think in almost every case) arguing for boom times that dwarf in frenzy that of Dawson City at the height of the gold rush, one of the most extreme historical examples imaginable.

The fact of the matter is that most of us don't have our campaigns centered around a traditional Gygaxian haven town adjacent to a massive dungeon complex which will be the sole focus of the campaign. Hense, if we are talking about realism and simulation, we ought to be arguing not for greater inflation than what Gygax used to explain his very gamist monetary decisions.

If the PCs are moving masses of men then keeping them supplied will become a lot more expensive too, you can apply a x5 or x10 multiplier.

When you said this, were you already aware that D&D's pricing scheme assumes that a single egg costs the PC's, in modern terms, $24? That's what an egg costs in Dawson City/D&D (per Gygax's claim). It's obvious that laborers earning on the silver peice standard can't live on the gold peice standard that the PC's are forced to.

I making zero assumptions beyond those required for a medieval economy. Rather, I'm trying to create a sensible medieval economy. Don't start lecturing me about my supposed anachronisms until you do some math.

 

[Celebrim]

This is a strange objection since in every edition of D&D prior to 4e we always had hireling costs which explicitly facilitated exactly this sort of thing. Of course wealthy adventurers can hire hordes of hirelings! This doesn't change the game - it is the game!

This objection has existed for me ever since 1e. I hear you saying "it is the game", but I'm willing to bet a small portion of my reputation (as it were and with what little value that that has), that I've gone further along these lines than you have. You are telling me "it is the game", but did you as a PC 20 years or so ago, run around with small armies at your heels? I'm not talking just a nodwick or a man-at-arms or a torch bearer. Has player awareness of this ease of leveraging labor ever really been the focus of your campaign, so that they go down into dungeons (or dig them up, or beseige them, or at least journey to them) with hundreds of hirelings? Honestly, is that what most people think the game is? When people think of default D&D, do they really think of that? Because I'm willing to bet I've actually play 'that game', and you probably are talking about theory.

 

[Alzrius]

I generally just use the cost of living descriptions for Pathfinder to determine income at various social classes.

Now, to be fair, these are the expenses, rather than salaries earned, but they still set a fairly good baseline.

 

[S'mon]

To begin with, S'mon, you entire post is infused with the assumption that I don't know anything about medieval economies.

Eh, no it's not.

 

[S'mon]

If hovels were a mere 100gp, I'd have less of a problem with that. Still some problem but much less of one. That implies only that a hovel requires 6000-10000 man days of labor to create. The problem is that typically, because buildings are always priced according to the gold peice encomy, simple hovels are priced at like 1000gp

Where's that? You may well be right, 3e in particular had some hugely excessive building prices AIR (a stone tower costing the same as a Daern's Instant Fortress) but I've always found it much easier to ignore or tone down the occasional outbursts of excessive pricing (1 million gp for a 3e fortress vs ca 50,000gp in 1e) than to change the whole economy so labourers earn gps every day.

I first had to deal with this issue in using (AIR) Paul Vernon's "Designing A Quasi-Medieval Society" White Dwarf articles. Vernon pointed out that ale in 1e AD&D cost 5cp/pint, whereas labourers were paid 1 sp/day. This, he pointed out, was silly, and therefore proposed an 'ale standard' where all prices were increased x5. The problem was that many of Gygax's PHB prices (ale) had been arbitrarily inflated, while others had not (swords, notably - and chickens seem cheap at 12cp even on a 1sp/day standard). I toyed with the ale standard, and it works well for an 'Alaska Gold Rush' milieu to match the inflated prices, but for a more settled milieu I found it worked much better to keep the sp/day standard and reduce inflated prices in line; often with fairly minor tweaks - 5cp gets you a gallon of ale, say; a flagon for 1cp.

 

[S'mon]

When you said this, were you already aware that D&D's pricing scheme assumes that a single egg costs the PC's, in modern terms, $24? That's what an egg costs in Dawson City/D&D (per Gygax's claim). It's obvious that laborers earning on the silver peice standard can't live on the gold peice standard that the PC's are forced to.

I making zero assumptions beyond those required for a medieval economy. Rather, I'm trying to create a sensible medieval economy. Don't start lecturing me about my supposed anachronisms until you do some math.

I'm finding your tone a bit offensive here. You do understand that I'm arguing for increasing *labour* costs in gold-rush areas, *not* item costs?

I'll try to put this simply:

In a gold-rush area, use (1e-3e) PHB prices, and multiply the sp-standard hireling costs by x5 or x10. Elite NPC hireling costs are already on gp standard.

In a normal area, reduce (1e-3e) PHB prices where they appear inflated (perhaps to 1/5 - which coincidentally is 4e's standard 'sale by PCs' value). Use (1e-3e) sp-standard hireling costs as-is. In some case Elite NPC hireling costs should be reduced, perhaps to 1/5.

One advantage for me of this approach is that it keeps a gold piece as still being of some value. If you convert everything to a gp/day standard then you exaggerate the already very low value of gold in the game.

Edit: I'll also reduce the value of mundane gems & jewelry in the 1e DMG to around 1/10 listed price; this restores them to reasonable value in comparison to silver, gold, and magic items.

 

[S'mon]

This objection has existed for me ever since 1e. I hear you saying "it is the game", but I'm willing to bet a small portion of my reputation (as it were and with what little value that that has), that I've gone further along these lines than you have. You are telling me "it is the game", but did you as a PC 20 years or so ago, run around with small armies at your heels? I'm not talking just a nodwick or a man-at-arms or a torch bearer. Has player awareness of this ease of leveraging labor ever really been the focus of your campaign, so that they go down into dungeons (or dig them up, or beseige them, or at least journey to them) with hundreds of hirelings? Honestly, is that what most people think the game is? When people think of default D&D, do they really think of that? Because I'm willing to bet I've actually play 'that game', and you probably are talking about theory.

I was almost always the DM 20 years ago. AIR the reason PCs often did not hire hordes of hirelings was that it did not seem to be a very effective tactic, as I have already discussed - mid-high level PCs being so much more effective. But it was certainly an *available* tactic, and would be used where necessary - eg hiring a ship & crew to explore the Isle of Dread. I can certainly recall cases of PCs taking dozens or hundreds of often-short-lived Ftr-0s into battle with them, and against 1e giants those F0s armed with pole arms or 2-handed swords could actually be quite effective. We once had a battle where the PCs held off an army of 100 fire giants attacking Irillian with the aid of their own army of 0th level men-at-arms.

 

[haakon1]

In a pre-modern setting, of course the peasant can't slap down 100gp and buy a hovel! He inherits or makes his own, with help. I'm not sure where you get the overpriced tools from; but certainly tools would be lovingly maintained and last for years; old and worn tools would be resold to poor peasants, only rich peasants could buy new tools direct from the blacksmith.

Rather than assume a gp-based modern-American economy, it works much better* IMO to assume a medieval baseline, then if the PCs do throw money around by hiring vast numbers of people, that's when inflation can kick in; hireling costs will go up. If the PCs are moving masses of men then keeping them supplied will become a lot more expensive too, you can apply a x5 or x10 multiplier.

I'm with S'mon, clearly -- I like a semi-realistic medieval baseline, with the PC's being very much the anomaly. Yes, the PC's are much richer than the average peasant farmer. But when you loot the horde of a dragon, that seems exactly how it should be.

To me, the Gygaxian Gold Rush prices for adventuring goods is right on where there's high demand for those goods, on very thin supply lines of them.

That works in my campaign, where the country is on the edge of civilization and there's a major war going on -- so very little of the production of armor, weapons, warhorses, etc. is not going onto the open market.

I don't worry about inflation over-and-above that from the PC's, as their cash hordes are relatively quite small compared to the overall wealth of the community (using 3.5e setting rules). If a LOT of adventurers are getting Facebook-founder rich, then it would be a problem -- but if there's only a few groups of rich adventurers, it's like the price of everything is going to turn into Palo Alto tech-boom real estate pricing immediately!

What I do worry about is when the PC's want to buy a lot of a certain commodity, then the supply may not be enough. Like they wanted to buy 8 light warhorses, in a small trading town that had a horse dealer. I let them buy only 3 light warhorses -- 2 were actually from the local lord who decided to aid them -- and for the rest, they needed to make due with light riding horses, because that's all the town had. Later on, in a big city, they sold the light riding horses and obtained light warhorses from the military, as part of a deal for doing a mission for them.

 

[haakon1]

Personally I find peasants rolling in gp who can afford to buy +1 swords down the market far more of a problem than rich PCs in an sp world. It's not the 1 sp/day labourer who jars me, it's the Orlane or Hommlet peasant with 100gp in his treasure chest.

Nod. I once let a player decide on the gear for a village militia, with a budget of 2 gp per capita, something like that. I forget the details. Anyhow, what he came up with was the Commoner 1's with a spear and a javelin each -- no armor, no shields -- on up to the Expert 3 village leader with I think a light crossbow, a sword, and scale mail. Seemed pretty awesome and right to me!

We actually played out a battle between that militia and attacking force of orcs and werewolves, plus the one PC who arrived in time to help (and single-handedly turned the tide of battle, since he was 8th level and had silver arrows).

That said, not every NPC has to be dirt poor. I don't mind "special" NPC's mixed in with the poor Commoner 1's. Like in the last town, the innkeeper was a retired Greyhawk thieves guild member, 8th level (3.5e) rogue with a magic dagger, some potions, and some useful connections (smugglers). But that's a "placed" NPC, not a typical one.

 

[haakon1]

Here's a historical question: what impact did all the gold spain brought back have? Thi was a huge influx of cash, akin to adventurers coming back from the dungeon.

Excellent question, sir.

From what I remember, the decline of Spain as a great power (ruling Spain, Belgium, Austria, parts of Italy, plus Latin America (except Brazil and parts of the Caribbean)) is blamed on the economic effects of all that gold and silver from LATAM.

That is, the Spanish rich were wealthy, and spent the money on imported luxury goods, rather than investing at home, building infrastructure, etc. So it became a hollow economy, while the English and the Dutch were scrapping and scrounging and building up business ideas like the corporation and shipping insurance, and innovations in farming and so on, that led to rising economic strength for the northern Europeans.