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Message: <blockquote data-quote="painandgreed" data-source="post: 1866723" data-attributes="member: 24969">There’s a thought. What is the economic power of the thieves guilds should such things exist? Or any guild for that matter as per DMG p. 132. We’ll work out thieves guild and the same economics should hold for a fighter’s guild.Each guild takes in dues. There are two ways to do such and varying rates to collect. They can either charge a flat fee of so much per member or they can charge a flat percentage of their yearly income, much like a church tithe. The more serices they provide, the more money they collect, and the more powerful they are. The more powerful the guild, the higher rates that it could charge. The two flat charges they suggest are either 50 GP or 1000 GP. Very few could afford a yearly fee of 1000GP, free training or not. Most would be in for 50GP. A flat rate would be from 10-50%. In our large city, they charged 1000GP from everybody for which is was less than a third of their yearly income and 50GP from everybody else, it would pull in 5100 GP/year, over half from three members. If they pulled in a flat rate of 10% from every member they’d equal this amount and more equally distribute the load (off of the three most powerful members). I think it’s obvious that they’d require a percentage form members in good standing. Perhaps charging a flat charge for temporary or trial membership of somebody who is not from the area or whose skills are unknown. These flat charges would not be figured into the average income.So we have 5,000 GP per every 10% that the guild charges of it’s members in our large city. If it was a powerful guild that was able to charge 50% of its members, it would rival one of the hundred noble families in the kingdom for income. If it spread itself out to the entire kingdom and collect from all the appropriate potential members, the dues would jump up to over 44,000 GP per 10%. Thus, a fighter’s or thief’s guild that was able to collect dues from all classed individual at 20% their yearly income would be making almost 90,000 GP per year and more powerful than 3 average noble families. With that sort of money, the nobles themselves would be looking at controlling such organizations. Even a kingdom wide thief’s guild that only managed to pull in 10% from half the potential members would bring in around the income of a noble family. Rival guilds would drastically cut down on the economic power of such guilds by siphoning away their dues. They’d have to be dealt with. In kingdoms that feared the power of such guilds, the nobles might sponsor rival guilds to cut down on such power within the kingdom and protect the power of the nobles.</blockquote>

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