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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mac Callum" data-source="post: 1855539" data-attributes="member: 17035">Something to keep in mind ....Karin's Dad and I kicked some numbers back and forth some time ago starting with the question "How much money does a peasant need to survive?"  According to the DMG incomes tables NPCs can't afford anything.  Literally.  Warriors can't afford weapons, farmers can't afford seed or a hut.  Assuming your average human peasnt has a wife and several kids, they need more money.If you want to keep the prices for good, staples, and equipment the same (which I recommend, for simplicity), but want it more "realistic", the non-magical Income Tables have to be multiplied by 5.  That's one thing to keep in mind.Another is the productivity-enhancing powers of magic.  Cantrips like hygiene and mending are incredibly useful to a non-manufacturing society.  Among other things, hygiene keep the beer from spoiling.  Also, consider the effect of a simple plant growth spell.  Spells are free to cast (yeah, there's a market price, but pro bono spells have no material costs), so a cleric tending to his flock can considerably increase the farm productivity of his constituents.  Instead of 80% of the population being farmers, less than 40% would have to be - and that's just one spell.You can assume there are many spells not in the PHB that make day-to-day life more productive and bearable.  In fact, if you're shooting for a "internally consistent world", you have to assume those spells are going on all the time.The world the DMG paints is one with a lot of wealth, but the wealth is concentrated in a few individuals within society, much more so than we in the modern world are used to.  If you compare NPC wages (even multiplied by 5) with the price for spellcasting services, a moderately leveled wizard puts today's top-shelf legal talent to shame, from an hourly billing point of view.Wealth is more concentrated, but also much more liquid and in flux.  The wealth get's invested in magical items and weapons, and then one adventuring group bets half the wealth of a nation on winning a couple fights with BBEG's.  Very risky, like an entire civilization based gambling ... wait a sec, ever been to Las Vegas?Like Vegas, a D&D society probably has heavy rollers coming in with loot all the time, that money gets passed around to Wizards and Churches for spellcasting services, taxes are then paid by those guys to support the gryphon-riding King's Guard, and then the heavy rollers blow town to take on (and get eaten by a dragon).  Don't worry though - it's not like +4 Defenders "go bad."  It will just sit there waiting until some group succeeds in taking down the dragon.In other words, if you assume that non-PHB productivity enhancing magic is going on in the background, and you multiply non-magical wages by 5, pretty much everything else in the DMG "just works out."Does it work out perfectly?  Probably not, but it's good enough for this economist, and at that point I apply "Hong's Law": Don't think too hard about D&D.  Because if you do, you'll realize it's cheaper & safer to just build a network of permanent teleportation circles from Big City to Big City and dispense with roads and sailing ships altogether, and then none of the established worlds make any damn sense.</blockquote>

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