Characters Making Money

[ThirdWizard]

The thing is, you make so little money at a day job in D&D compared to adventuring. You're epic, and a single CR 21 encounter should give you somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 gp. At level 22, your total wealth should be above one million gold pieces. And that's low epic. By level 30, total wealth should be over four million gold pieces and an equal level encounter should net you over 40,000 gp. I know most encounters won't be equal level, but still the money gained through adventuring is far higher than you can make sitting around town.

During downtime, though, there's no reason you can't sell your services casting spells. A single 9th level spell cast for someone will net you 1530 gp, but people probably won't be asking for those too much. I would assume that mulitple spells over the couse of the week would add up to that, so it sounds like a good per week amount. Every once in a while someone might want something expensive, though, like wish, which would net you 26,530 gp (for -5000 xp), which is 6,530 more gp than you can wish for. If you're really up for money you could advertise around that you're willing to cast wish for people.

 

[KarinsDad]

I find economics discussions here on the boards to be mildly amusing.

DND economics (for lack of a better word) suck. The designers wouldn't know good economics if it bit them in the butt. The entire economics model is silly and requires the suspension of disbelief more than any other aspect of the game (IMO).

The vast majority of standard items and services in the game cost 1 CP to maybe 10 GP. You could equate that to $1 to $1000. Which means that first level potions cost $5000 and second level potions cost $30,000. In Eberron, a train trip for a single person from one side of a country to another side (2000 miles) costs 1000 GP or $100,000. Very few people could afford (or would want to pay) $100,000 for a single trip.

Then, a +1 Longsword costs 2315 GP. From 15 GP to 2315 GP (or $1500 to $231500), just for +1 to hit and +1 damage. That might equate to a 20% to 30% increase in effectiveness for 154x the cost. You can hire three extra swordsmen with weapons and armor for 2300 GP and get a 300% increase in effectiveness for an entire year. $1500 is reasonable for a tool of the trade. A jump to a quarter million dollars is not, let alone over $20,000,000 for the best tools of the trade.

In comparison, look at cars in the real world: $15,000 for a regular car fine, but nobody would spend $200,000,000 for a car. Multiplication factors of over 1300 are not economically sound for most products.

And, even if you cut these prices by 10 and say that a drink cost $0.10 (instead of $1) and a night in the inn costs $2 (instead of $20), the prices for magic is still fairly outrageous because the wages for all characters would be cut by 10 as well. The skewed ratio would still be exactly the same (i.e. if you lower the conversion standard to make it easy to get a mental real world handle on, it affects everything).

Virtually nobody in such a world (except wealthy merchants, clergy, and nobility) could afford to have any spellcaster cast a spell for them and the cost is so great that even wealthy people would almost never do it. It's just totally skewed.


One book I found related to the subject is Artificer's Handbook by Mystic Eye Games. It doesn't handle all economics, but it does throttle down the outrageous costs for casting spells and crafting items.


Getting back on subject, I agree that you have to "go adventuring" in some manner in order to make serious money in DND. Jobs just pay too little. As a higher level PC, you could hire low level NPCs to do your adventuring for you (just like higher level NPCs might have hired you when you were low level).

But, selling spells (and/or items) would appear to be a low demand (due to excessive cost) commodity in the DND economics system. Extremely few NPCs in any given locale could afford you and the vast majority of those should not have need of you at any given point in time. The best you might find is lower level adventurers who might have the cash and might want what you can sell.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Afaik, a GP is the equivalent to 20 dollars, not 100. At least, that's the number given in urban arcana.

 

[Corlon]

still, 20,000 bucks for a train ride...I think it's less than 2000 US dollars to fly pretty much anywhere in the world.

 

[KarinsDad]

Afaik, a GP is the equivalent to 20 dollars, not 100. At least, that's the number given in urban arcana.

And that would make your drink at the bar cost 20 cents (taverns would have to sell a LOT of drinks to stay in business).

Your overnight stay at the inn cost $4.

And day laborers would get paid $2 a day (if I recall correctly, this is not in the SRD, rather the DMG). Even very skilled workers would often only get $10 to $20 a day.

But, a low to mid level adventurer easily finds $50,000 or much much more in magic items, cash, and gems on a group of bandits (one +1 Longsword is worth $46,300).

The problem is that the ratio would always be the same, regardless of whether a GP is worth $1, $5, $20, or $100. The ratio is what is messed up, not our individual understandings of what a GP is worth.

 

[kigmatzomat]

Afaik, a GP is the equivalent to 20 dollars, not 100. At least, that's the number given in urban arcana.

That's up to individual GMs. I use 1GP=$100 using the "beer and bread" basis. Beer and bread are the two things that are in virtually every civilization and are universally consumed.
In my neck of the woods beer and bread is about $2 each. By the PHB bread is 2cp and 1 gallon (~10 bottles of beer) is 2sp (20cp = 2cp/ea). By that 1cp=$1.

You could grab a 2000BC egyptian, an 800AD celt, a 1400AD samurai, and a 2001AD american and say "that man can buy 1,000 gallons of beer and 1,000 loaves of bread with his monthly income" and all of them will say "He must be wealthy." ($22,000 worth of beer & bread) (*how* wealthy will vary with setting)

Truth is that no static economic system exists. You could make a setting where all the PHB numbers made sense but in-game events would begin to have consequences. Storms ruin crops, plagues kill craftsmen, the lone druid willing to deal with the villagers dies off. The market begin evolving and you end up with the rise and fall of prices.

But to what value? I deal with banking, investments, harvests, mines, and all sorts of profit making ventures in my game and it isn't worth my time and effort to come up with an intricate economic model.

The prices in the PHB are like the combat system; good enough that 90% of the gamers don't really question it, 8% can accept it as handwaving for the sake of fun, and 2% either jump systems or write their own.

 

[Eolin]

Guys, Guys, Guys ...

It seems rightly obvious to me that all the costs given are highly inflated. Why? Because its the prices the PCs and other adventures pay, not the real costs.

The Order of the Stick had a good one on this. They had a town where the local cleric would heal anyone for free, swords cost a coppper, etc ... Then they see the adventures coming to town, and everybody gets ready ... prices skyrocket right before The Heroes hit town.

And i figure that's how DND is really set up. The PCs pay more because they have so much money and are suckers.

 

[KarinsDad]

Guys, Guys, Guys ...

It seems rightly obvious to me that all the costs given are highly inflated. Why? Because its the prices the PCs and other adventures pay, not the real costs.

The Order of the Stick had a good one on this. They had a town where the local cleric would heal anyone for free, swords cost a coppper, etc ... Then they see the adventures coming to town, and everybody gets ready ... prices skyrocket right before The Heroes hit town.

And i figure that's how DND is really set up. The PCs pay more because they have so much money and are suckers.

Although a good sounding theory, it does not explain why room and board are not inflated as well.

 

[Felix]

Although a good sounding theory, it does not explain why room and board are not inflated as well.

Well, the cheap lodgings are the trap to lure the adventurers in where they can be gouged on everything else, eh?
Heh.

 

[Vlos]

Guys, thanks for the feedback. Yeah. my character would not be sitting around selling/casting spells for others to make money, but rather going out and finding rare herbs or other natural valuables (like giant pearls). She would technically be adventuring to get the materials, but because this would be during the parties "down-time" I didn't want to take up a session tracking down stuff, while the others sat about, since obviosuly they would be doing their thing during that time (and not helping me).

My questions were targeted to see what about a EPIC character could make in a week if they used their spells, because then I would say as collecting natural resources, I could make approximately "x" (or rather collect "x" in components/regents). We play in a very toned down "coin" campaign. We have a "EPIC" item which is given to us by our patron, but otherwise we are non-epic characters in terms of items/wealth. So at level 30 (which my character is by the way) has no where near the suggested EPIC wealth level.