Drow question

[wingnut_dc]

I am working on a Drow campaign and was wondering if anyone had house rules on the pricing of slaves?

I am also looking for a decent underground city map. If any one could point me in the right direction, I would be gratefull.

 

[Nightfall]

Two places to look: Underdark and the maps in WotC free map place.

As for slave pricing, most slaves if I recall go for silver pieces, depending on their strength, usefulness and need. I'd say a normal human peasant goes for around...5 silvers. You can go up and down from there as you wish.

 

[CombatWombat51]

Work: 100 gp (Str mod + Con mod)
Pleasure: 100 gp (Con mod + Cha mod)

Yeah, yeah, I know Charisma isn't beauty, but it is linked to Perform...

I figured the neighborhood price by assuming that a humanoid slave is more useful than a horse, and went from there. Short and sweet.

 

[Nightfall]

I like Combat's but it might be a bit over priced. But then that's depends on how good a slave trade you have going I guess.

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

Prices of slaves are in Green Ronin's Plot and Poison which is dedicated to the drow in it's entirely.

 

[CombatWombat51]

I like Combat's but it might be a bit over priced. But then that's depends on how good a slave trade you have going I guess.

I agree that logically, that's a whole mess of cash. But if you compare it to a trained horse (trained for war, in this case), it's sorta cheap (heavy war horses are 400 gp). Humanoids should certainly count as trained, even though the above prices are for assumed unskilled laborers. A draft horse can only pull things. A human can dig, mine, pick, harvest, log, build, etc. Also, remember that an average slave would only cost 100 gp, which is quite low for a tool so versatile.

You could always modify the price based on the skill of a laborer, or other special talents, but I was figuring that most slaves would be young, between 14 and 20, say, and generally unskilled.

Of course, pricing anything of a new variety is an exercise in creative logic with D&D's wondrous economy

 

[wingnut_dc]

I have been working with several 2nd edition accessories on the Drow for most of my information, it would be interesting to look through Plot and Poison, but I didn’t want to buy a supplement just for prices of slaves.

Reading through the descriptions of the Drow and their attitudes towards slaves, I would think that they would treat a horse better than a slave, especially a slave of another race. At 100gp, one would put some value in them and not kill or maim them at their pleasure as it seems they are prone to do. Noble houses have hundreds of slaves at their disposal and is sounds like they always need more as they have a tendency to die.

CombatWombat51 I do like your idea of cost based on stats though.

Does 1gp x their primary stat they are going to be used for x level seem to low?

Example; 1st level worker slave with a strength of 14.
1 x 14 x 1 = 14gp

Any thoughts?

 

[CombatWombat51]

I'm admittedly biased against drow, but I'll take another swing

The price of a slave should be like the price of anything: supply and demand. There's surely lots of demand. Come to think of it, I bet humanoids would be more valuable than most animals in the underdark. They don't use horses to plow their fields, one would think. Don't they tend to grow lots of mushrooms and fungus and stuff? Sounds like it needs to be hand-picked, and I doubt any snotty drow would do it himself. Also, the drow seem like they'd enjoy having slaves around as sorts of symbols of wealth, like jewelry. Yes, plenty of demand.

As for supply... well, that's sorta up to you. If humans run around in scattered villages next to entrances to the underdark, and the drow raiding parties can gather slaves with no fear of retribution from military or heroes, then the supply is gonna be quite high. Your price would be well-suited for such a world where slaves can be easily harvested. However, I can't see humans being so complacent about getting kidnapped all the time. Seems like they'd fight back after a bit, send adventurers to plug the holes, set up guard posts, or something like that. I picture drow raids as being on the rarer side of things, so slaves would cost more.

The price of slaves wouldn't just depend on the frequency of raids, either. If your world has slavers on the surface, that's another source of slaves.

Reading through the descriptions of the Drow and their attitudes towards slaves, I would think that they would treat a horse better than a slave, especially a slave of another race. At 100gp, one would put some value in them and not kill or maim them at their pleasure as it seems they are prone to do.

True, they wouldn't go around offing their slaves, but they could certainly beat the crap out of them. Think about the terrible practices of American slaveholders. And those slaves were worth incredible sums of money. Something like $400 to $800 dollars, and that was a hell of a lot of money back then! And those slavedrivers didn't have clerics around who could heal up all those nasty wounds. So would drow kill off their slaves? No sooner than they would break their swords, set fire to their fields, or kill off those underdark-bison-things. Would they mercilessly whip, kick, and generally mistreat their slaves? Sounds good to me.

Keep in mind, that I'm not a drow fanboy, so I could be way off the mark on any of these assumptions. I was just laying out what makes sense to me

 

[ichabod]

In the Labyrinth says "Figure the amount that character could earn in four years, if he/she was free and working at the best *legal* job allowed to one with his spells/talents. That is the base price. The price may be raised if the slave has unusual talents, or is especially handsome, beautiful, or strong."

Conversely, I suppose the price could be lowered if they were especially weak or troublesome. In D&D the ammount they will earn in four years will generally take into account high abilities, since they will figure into the skill bonus that determines gp earned per week. Of course, that's just mental stats.

What's an unskilled laborer? A laborer costs 1 sp per day. Figure you can get 250 days of work out of them in a year, and you get the 100 gp figure quoted above. If they're skilled, the price goes up a lot. Even if you assume no tools, a character with a craft skill of +2 can make 5 gp a week, raising the cost to 1,000 gp. Two problems with this are it doesn't account for upkeep (about 30 gp a year), and it could be argued the range of price indicates a flaw in the economic assumptions of D&D.

In any case, this is the formula I would use: (value of labor - cost of upkeep) * expected time kept / 2, +/- 10% times str and con modifiers (or other ability modifiers for other types of slaves). The ITL formula would then assume negligible upkeep, and eight years of work from the average slave.

 

[wingnut_dc]

I am no fanboy of Drow either and you bring up some excellent points CombatWombat51. I had no clue about the price of a slave in American history. The reason I am doing this is, my buddy heard I had successfully ran an evil campaign before and wanted to play a Drow campaign. So I said I would do it.

My thoughts are, slaves are a consumable product. They turn any race they can get their hands on into slaves. They would be mostly non-trained or cannon fodder for their house army.

As to healing them, I can’t see any priestess of Lolth having enough compassion to cast a heal spell on a slave. They would rather take him, if he can’t work anymore, and sacrifice him to Lolth.

But, I think you guys have convinced me that slaves are worth more than I thought. Ichabod, my head almost exploded trying to read that formula. (Maybe it is the cold I am trying to fight off) I was hoping to keep it more simple, without having to do all the research on the various npc wages.

New formula;

100gp x (stat mod + skill bonus or bab for a fighter type)

More thoughts?