D&D Economics

[Ace]

Not this again.

How magic affect D&D economics.

For God's sake, why can't EVERYONE, even the stingy, evil, non-contributors search?

This was all hashed out in a thread not a year ago. Pages and pages of debate.

The bottom line? There are not enough casters of high enough level and the spells do not do the right things to make a big difference in the average persons life.

Cure Disease? Sorry, reinfection.
Plant Growth? It says PLANTS. Not CROPS. PLANTS. Including weeds. And yes, dandelions are useful [edible] but not every weed is useful. So you have more crops AND more weeds. And it says "potential" productivity, so droughts and plagues would still be in existence.
Fabricate/Major Creation? Sorry, there's not much demand for mass-produced armor.

Although...there should be some Core spell that could easily destroy locusts...

So there are no other spells in the entire game world and no way for Clerics, Wizards or Druids to research varient spells

How about --

Crop Bless --

As Plant Growth exccept the material components is a leaf or stem from the type of plant you want to grow and it effects only include those plant types

How about Lightning Varient spells to aid nitrogen fixing

How about Disintegrate varients that don't effect certain materials

How about the fact that cure disease kills the disease DEAD -- and if used wisely can nip an infection in the bud like sday Pennicilin but better

Hell I think there is an official Detect Disease spell somewhere -- cast it and find the source of the infection

hell how about the simple official common Cure Light Wounds which can bring a man from less than a minute to live (neg 2 HP) to full health (pos 7 HP) in six seconds almost every village has several people whoc an cast it !

That spell alone will make huge changes in peoples lives

hand waving that fact that magic makes changes in a normal D&D world is sloppy -- in a Low Magic world -- well thats another matter

 

[SWBaxter]

Plant Growth? It says PLANTS. Not CROPS. PLANTS. Including weeds. And yes, dandelions are useful [edible] but not every weed is useful. So you have more crops AND more weeds. And it says "potential" productivity, so droughts and plagues would still be in existence.

That's a rather silly objection. Irrigation also benefits weeds at least as much as crops, and is also susceptible to droughts and plagues. Despite that, irrigation still allows a huge increase in productivity, because nobody just irrigates the land and says "OK, work's done". Similarly, Plant Growth, if available, will allow communities that have access to it a huge advantage over those that don't.

 

[TerraDave]

Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe makes sense of the nonsense, but doesn't really try to fix it.

One problem with fixing it is that the first thing you would do is remove coins for the most part. No one really used cash until fairly recently.

Even if you kept coins as the means of exchange (reasonable given some situations) you've got the problem of coins of different nations.

Then you've got commodities. Managing a commodities market in D&D could turn into a nightmare.

You've also got regional deviance. In the U.S. alone, some things range by up to 500% depending on where you purchase them. And that's a nation with a standard unit of exchange and mass transportation.

Chartered towns would sell things for different amounts than next door kingdoms due to taxation and tarriff differences.

Certain goods can vary in price wildly during wartime or famine.

Then you need an economic picture of what's manufactured and/or grown where. Saffron is ridiculously expensive due to the global economy, but without mass transportation it would likely be fairly cheap in one area and prohibitively expensive elsewhere (this may be the case in realiyu, I don't know).

Then you've got the service industry which can vary on whims and be easily price-fixed by a guild.

Not to mention quality of goods which is never addressed in D&D. A functional longsword is great, but what about a beautiful one made by a master craftsman? These would be more like works of art, costing whatever the market could bear, upwards of 1,000 times that of a common sword if it was the right craftsman or it used to be owned by the right person.

To be honest, I think the best way to do it is to simply learn something of economic theory and ad hoc everything.

A lot of good points here, but the whole "nobody" uses coins thing is a myth. Its funny, Aristotle refers to a time when coins were not used, but it was before his time...money is highly usefull, and even the level of trade in a medieval or ancient society requires some kind of medium of exchange...in fact some of the least collectible coins are things like byzantine "bezants", because so many were minted.
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D&D does use a metric gold system instead of a non-metric silver system (comments about a so called silver standard in the 3rd ed DMG not withstanding), convient but not too realistic. In AD&D gold coins were also huge: 10 to a pound, so it could take a couple of pounds of it to buy a sword! 3rd edition is a little better here, but only a little. However, the rational for this addresses some of the posters: D&D prices reflected a gold rush enviroment, where adventures where bringing vast hordes to the surface and driving up prices.

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And then there is magic...given how hard it is to predict what happens in our real life economy, (or to understand its past behaviour), I can safely say that we probably have no clue what magic would do...but it is fun to speculate, and there is versimultude. I just assume it accounts for the less misrable world most probably imagine (vs the rotting teeth, dying baby, back-breaking labor reality). It could also account for the incredible wealth and productivity of small towns implied in the DMG. Or not.

 

[The Shaman]

For me and my players, the closer we get to a core sense of reality in our games, the better they are. No, not everything has to be "realistic", but as long as the underpinnings all work together semi-logically, the game simply feels better. This includes the economics.

Like Tolkein, I feel the best fantasy is based in a world that feels natural and then adds the fantasy on top of it.

This is the second time today that I've strongly agreed with Wombat...

Excuse me, everyone? A moment, please? Wombat is officially my new favorite poster. Thank you, that is all.

It is the contrast with the mundane that makes the fantastic seem more fantastic, which is why I enjoy topics like this one - unfortunately it's also one that I've had rotten luck with. I can usually manage decent population demographics, and I have a good handle on trade at the macro scale, at least with respect to what's produced where and how it affects the balance of trade between regions, but figuring out micro stuff has never been my strong suit. I rely heavily on MMS with some (and I use this term very loosely) "common sense" adjustments for less developed lands.

That said, I'm going to sit back and enjoy watching the big brains hash this one out. Thank you in advance, by the way, for all your valuable input!

 

[Treebore]

There is a standard pricing for casting spells. It ranges from 10 GP/caster level to I believe about 90 GP/level, plus any extra cost of components/foci.

 

[Arnwyn]

Due to a recent thread, I've been looking at economics as presented in D&D. It's already well established that they don't make sense, and that they're broken and stupid in general. Some products make this even worse, by pricing things in entirely unreasonable fashions.

Is there any sourcebook that makes a reasonable attempt at fixing this mess, by providing realistic wealth guidelines per level and making the prices of goods and services make consistent sense?

In my dreams... It bugs me a lot, as well, but that's because I'm a professional accountant working in economics.

[And it takes away from adventuring opportunities that my players and I are interested in - such as the consistent and proper treatment of caravans, piracy, smuggling, and even something like a "merchant house" campaign...]

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I used to use the old Imperial system of coinage... Whoo boy! did it confuse people. And explaining that a pound sterling meant exactly that bottered some people, but for may years coins were used by weight, not face value.

For realism I would recommend using Moderns purchase DCs. I believe that it is also in Unearthed Arcana.

The Auld Grump

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

Why will standards of living get worse? (It's been too long since econ 101.)

This happens all the time today. Farmers have a bumper crop, and suddenly what they were selling for $25 a bushel now only sells for $12. Their crops are growing better than ever, but they're making less money, because everyone's crops are growing more. This is why the government pays farmers to NOT plant crops.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

This happens all the time today. Farmers have a bumper crop, and suddenly what they were selling for $25 a bushel now only sells for $12. Their crops are growing better than ever, but they're making less money, because everyone's crops are growing more. This is why the government pays farmers to NOT plant crops.

And lack of an effective transport system only makes it worse.

However in a medieval society a peasant does not work for wages, so what would actually happen is that the fields would be reduced in size, allowing the farmer to put his hand to other tasks, improving his standard of living without increasing his liquid funds.

The Auld Grump

 

[Conaill]

Ah, the perennial D&D economics topic!

Check out the ancient "Silly economics of DnD" thread, which includes such highlights as:

It is really my fault...

The original systems in D&D and AD&D were developed for the PC adventurer, done without reference to the economics of the various societies.

Of course the chaps redesigning 2E should have picked that up and solved the problem--done rather easily. I've mentioned it before, but in the LA game system I've fixed gold at $500 per o8unce, silver at $10, and copper at $1. Basically, wages and prices are assumed to be those comprable to the US in c. 2000, save for the special items listed on price lists--mainly swords, war horses and the like. Anyway, with relatively current standards to serve as a guide, managing wages and prices and wealth/treasure is pretty easy.

Cheerio,
Gary

Lots of good analysis and references to real medieval prices in that thread. Personally, i really like KarinsDad's solution to this problem:

I used to be bothered by this quite a bit.

But, although there are some items which are out of line with my expectations of what costs should be, they are few and far between.

My real problem lies with the wages that various hirelings get. So, I multiplied all wages by 5 in my game.

I use a 1 CP = $1 ratio and compare costs to real world equivalents (i.e. a horse is not a horse, it's a car or motorcycle since it provides transportation).

When NPC wages get multiplied by 5, the 1 SP guy only gets paid $50 a day (with my ratio). But, $50 a day makes a lot more sense to me than $10 a day.

This guy only makes $10K a year, but he is at the bottom of the totem pole and had better have roommates.

The yearly equivalent wages then become:

$100,000 Alchemist
$15,000 Animal tender/groom
$50,000 Architect/engineer
$100,000 Barrister
$40,000 Clerk
$10,000 Cook
$40,000 Entertainer/performer
$10,000 Laborer
$60,000 Limner
$10,000 Maid
$30,000 Mason/craftsman
$20,000 Mercenary
$40,000 Mercenary horseman
$60,000 Mercenary Leader
$10,000 Porter
$200,000 Sage
$30,000 Scribe
$40,000 Smith
$30,000 Teamster
$20,000 Valet/lackey

Are these real accurate? Probably not. But, most of them are in the $20,000 to $40,000 wages that a lot of people make in the real world (in the U.S).

So, this makes sense for me and my players since all of us live in the U.S.

The day laborer is paid the worse, but at 5 SP per day, he can still go into a bar and afford an ale at 4 CP once or twice a day.

This has resolved most of my problems with it and at least made it such that your typical workers can afford to be seen in the tavern or inn without saying that item costs are 2 to 10 times greater for adventurers (i.e. they see the tourists coming syndrome where any smart adventurer would give a local a SP to go buy a backpack at 5 SP instead of the adventurer's 2 GP price). YMMV.