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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6511310" data-attributes="member: 4937">Even an open decked fishing vessel could require 5 crew.  Keep in mind that the boat is on the ocean 24 hours a day, and so requires the crew to work in shifts, that modern navigational aids and modern safety features are unknown, and that sails have to be furled and unfurled by hand - no motors.  A merchant ship meant for traversing the deep ocean would more likely have a crew of at least 25.  Columbus's flagship, the Santa Maria was only 62 feet long and weighed just 100 tons, but had a crew of 40.   It was nonetheless a comparatively large merchant vessel of its day.   His two smaller ships, at 58 feet long and 60 tons, had crews of 26.That number seems far more realistic to me than 15/day, along with its assumption that skilled labor is 3 times that.  It's a bit under my estimate of 30/60 coins per month, but 15/45 is at least in the right ballpark.  Keep in mind that D&D has long had some confusion regarding pricing for hirelings based on a bit of incoherence Gygax introduced in 1e.  Gygax priced the PC economy in gold pieces.  Everything of interest to PCs was priced in gold pieces, and treasure was allocated in gold piece units.  Anything the PCs might want to buy that was useful in a dungeon was valued according to its use in a dungeon.  This was largely a gamist convention to allow big piles of treasure while maintaining game balance.  However, Gygax was also an amateur historian and well acquainted with real world medieval economics.   So anything he considered largely outside the area of PC utility in a dungeon - food, livestock, taxes, wages for low skill labor, etc. - was priced in more realistic silver piece prices.  This incoherence was largely not addressed by latter writers, and its probably not until 4e that you see any real recognition of it and uniform costs for both labor and goods.   If 4e really did price labor at 15gp a day, it's probably because 4e is trying to dissuade adventurers from hiring large armies and the like.SIDE NOTE: It should be of little surprise to anyone reading this, that the scene that most annoys me in the otherwise fun movie 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl' is when they sail a 32 gun frigate meant to be crewed by 280 from Port Royal to Tortuga with a 'prize crew' of just 2.  In fact, at least 20 would have been required just to manage the ship for even a short period.  It's for me worse than Indiana Jones hanging on the periscope.</blockquote>

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