D&D price lists

[Conaill]

Let me give an example...

A moderately "hard" item to craft would be a longsword: 15 gp, DC 15.

An easy "item" that takes long to craft might be a set of 100 forks. Let's call a single fork 1.5 sp for convenience, DC 5 to craft. Fine, it's not a single item (neither is a set of arrows!), but the craft rules work nonetheless, and it points out the amount of "busy work" that can be associated with making low-DC items.

Let's say the crafter has a skill of +10 and "takes 10" for a total skill roll of 20. He can finish the longsword in half a week (300 sp/wk). The forks are *much* easier to craft than a longsword, but because there's so many it will take the crafter about three times as long (of very boring busy work) to finish.

End result: The crafter spends only half a week of very intense work on the sword and sells it for 15 gp. Then he spends a week and a half crafting plain forks - something he should probably have foisted off on an apprentice, because these are so easy to make he could do them in his sleep, and after all he's only going to get the market price for them: 15 gp for the entire lot of 100 forks.

Makes sense to me...

 

[Agback]

From what I've learned, peasant owning weapons were rare.

Have you, perchance, concentrated your studies on France after the middle of the 14th Century?

The fyrd that you mention is early on in the medieval period as is the wapentake or the hundred.

The fyrd changed its name after the Norman invasion. It was later known as the 'levy' and by other names: in post-mediaeval times as the posse comitatus and eventually the militia.

There wasn't a traditional peasant muster like them once the feudal system became heavily entrenched.

I don't believe that this statement is valid for most of Europe or most of the mediaeval period. But I suppose that it is far to sweeping a generalisation that I can reasonably expect you to back it up with anything short of a major piece of research work.

I could be wrong, and If I am, point me to some resources that indicate, in general, that peasants were allowed to (or even expected to) own military-grade weaponry (weapons that weren't used for agricultural/utiliy purposes) for any time period other than the dark ages/early middle ages.

Why don't you Google on the "Assize of Arms"?

The 1181 Assize of Arms required all freemen and burgesses to own and keep a gambeson, an iron cap, and a spear (if they had incomes over 5 pound per year (about threepence-farthing a day, they needed more weapons)). Now admittedly this probably excluded villeins, and did not affect poor labourers, but certainly peasant freeholders were included.

The 1252 Assize of Arms made it compulsory for every man who earned between 2 and 5 pound per year (and that included poor labourers) to own and keep bows.

1252 is not the Dark Ages. It is slap in the middle of the High Middle Ages.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Agback]

The %40 is probably not an unreasonable number, but the price fluctuations were much greater than that for some things.

Indeed! During the course of the mediaeval period economic development and technical progress in Europe doubled the price of horses and halved the price of metalgoods. Mining output and population changes also roughly cut the purchasing power of silver by a factor of three, but that is much less important.

It is the long-term trend in the relative prices that I propose to sweep under the carpet: just pick a mid-Twelfth Century average, and leave the -40% to +40% secular trend to the Econ-geeks. And note that GMs can easily divide or multiply all prices and wages by a fixed factor to represent a state in which specie is particularly plentiful or scarce.

Short-term fluctuations in price (eg. the price of food in years of famine, or inside besieged cities) can temporarily overwhelm the trend, can be quite extreme, and are really beyond the purpose of an RPG price list.

Regards,


Agback

 

[jgbrowning]

Why don't you Google on the "Assize of Arms"?

The 1181 Assize of Arms required all freemen and burgesses to own and keep a gambeson, an iron cap, and a spear (if they had incomes over 5 pound per year (about threepence-farthing a day, they needed more weapons)). Now admittedly this probably excluded villeins, and did not affect poor labourers, but certainly peasant freeholders were included.

The 1252 Assize of Arms made it compulsory for every man who earned between 2 and 5 pound per year (and that included poor labourers) to own and keep bows.

1252 is not the Dark Ages. It is slap in the middle of the High Middle Ages.

Regards,


Agback [/B]

Ah, its times like this that make me love history. Its always a sad thing to realize you were operating under faulty premises (at least for England, and at least until I can do some research into compliance rates, income statistics, and the success of the assize ) especially when those premisses have been shouted across a public forum.

However, there's always the thrill of find out something you didn't know before. But that's why they call it learning...

Thanks, Agback, for correcting me. Time to go hit myself with a brick. But its a 3.5 brick, so i'll be ok... heh

joe b.

 

[Agback]

Its always a sad thing to realize you were operating under faulty premises (at least for England, and at least until I can do some research into compliance rates, income statistics, and the success of the assize )

Even if compliance was poor, and even if technical compliance was achieved with arms so substandard as to be militarily useless, and even if the peasant levy had such poor training and morale as to be useless even though it was armed, the Assize of Arms is nevertheless one in the eye for anyone who insists that the lower classes were forbidden arms under the 'Feudal System'.

However, there's always the thrill of find out something you didn't know before.

Indeed. We are all more or less victims of high-school history teachers who had to teach 'the Feudal System' in two weeks.

Thanks, Agback, for correcting me. Time to go hit myself with a brick. But its a 3.5 brick, so i'll be ok.

a friend of mine used to have a very realistic nerf-brick which he kept handy for throwing at the television during history and archaeology programs. If you find a source, please tell me where it is, because I'd like one myself.

Regards,


Agback

 

[S'mon]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: D&D price lists

I can't seem to find the email where I discussed this with my DM recently, but sometime within the last couple of weeks we took a look at the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook and worked out that, at the listed prices, a stone cottage consisting of three rooms would have cost a common laborer (earning 1sp/day) something like 27 years wages to build.

This is beyond ridiculous.

According to The Economist, modern Third-World house price to earning ratios are at around that level.

In medieval terms: labourers don't live in stone cottages (that they own), they probably sleep in a barn or whatever sheltered spot they can find. Only rich yeoman farmers are likely to live in their own stone cottages - unless maybe it's unworked stone and stone is the handiest local building material, as in eg the Scottish highlands.

 

[Agback]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: D&D price lists

According to The Economist, modern Third-World house price to earning ratios are at around that level.

I subscribe to The Economist, and i don't remember seeing that figure. Could you give an issue and page number?

In medieval terms: labourers don't live in stone cottages (that they own), they probably sleep in a barn or whatever sheltered spot they can find.

That's a bit of an overstatement: what you say would be more likely of vagabonds than labourers in either city or village. According to Life in a Mediaeval Village by Frances & Joseph Gies (ISBN 0-06-092046-7), most of the day labourers were cottars, with toft and croft (and, I think, grazing rights in the common pasture, but I'm not sure of that), but no land in the fields. They would have had cottages of wattle and daub, perhaps with timber framing. And then, we must remember that some labourers (though not indeed day labourers) were servants of, and lived with, the wealthier villeins and freeholders.

In Elton (the village in Cambridgeshire that the Gies take as their typical village in op cit.), only the bailiff and one rich free tenant with peasants of his own lived in stone houses. Even the priest lived in a house of wattle and daub.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Damon Griffin]

a friend of mine used to have a very realistic nerf-brick which he kept handy for throwing at the television during history and archaeology programs. If you find a source, please tell me where it is, because I'd like one myself.

http://www.clownantics.com/foam.shtml