D&D 5E Goodberries and Eberron

[tetrasodium]

@Galandris those clothes need not be made locally. House Orien has reliable freight transport and such. House cannith's thing is making (early) industrial scale goods. Even today there are areas that are known for the type of specialized production that took place at a similar point of technology advancement in our history despite not really doing it much niw

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I agree that the art is certainly rosier than that, and even some of the lore. I rationalize that by considering it focusses on what the heroes are expected to encounter. They are like the protagonists of Verne's Around the World in 80 days (where Fogg is "upper middle class") or "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". They are supposed to take place in the real world, but they don't deal, or show, or even mention the crass poverty of many.

I make an effort to send waves of children begging whenever the heroes goes into the Cogs, though.

Yeah, the Cogs is there for that sort of urban noir “gotta do crime to live” vibe, so that tracks.

I disagree about the first part, though. I think the intention is simply that life is better in Eberron for the vast majority of people than it was for Victorian Americans or Europeans.

You do make good points about the fact that mortality should be lower because of better food access. Even without sterilization and vaccine, they should be healthier on average AND the ludicrously low density would prevent the spread of epidemics. In one of the linked documents where they studied infant mortality rate in the 19th century UK, they showed that the average MR in the campaigns was 7 points lower...

Thanks!

Yeah, even if we raise the population levels to a sane amount, it’s just not a dense world.

Btw I could see Lanterns of Good Health in cities, which simply give passersby a bonus on checks to resist disease, and like...some kind of subtle cleaning effect.

I wonder if Eberron has an equivalent to vaccines...

This, as well. I dig your idea of several grade of goodberry wine for that. No adventurer would ever by a healing potion that gives back one HP after each day of complete rest for a week. It would be a lifesaver for most of the commoner though, and wouldn't command a price nearly as high as a healing potion. There is a gray area of wide, very low power magic items. Integrating them could shift the balance toward a rosier Eberron.

IDK about “rosy”, but insofar as that term could mean “less terribly dystopian”, sure.
I think one thing for all of us to keep in mind is that Eberron isn’t the same world for every group, in terms of how advanced, how overtly magical, or how consistently dystopian/dark it is.
I’m glad folks like the Goodberry wine idea. I think it helps flesh out the world to have spells, items, and services, that just aren’t applicable to adventuring most of the time.

That's where the mending stones or "well of pure water" in villages would come from.


@tetrasodium I read KB's post about rural Eberron with interest. He does mention that "in small towns people may not own personal magic items" and sees them community-owned instead. Which is totally coherent with low individual wages. When he speaks about farms and their owner, he's (imo) speaking about the wealthier rural inhabitants who actually own a farm, not the many laborers toiling the farmland owned by the poorer farmhands and day laborer. The former could afford an "ice room" to preserve food (the latter would benefit from it because they probably eat food from the same storage as their employers, though).

And their employers’ ice room is probably effectively a community resource, with the benefits and drawbacks that come with that.
But also most farms before the very modern age are very small single family farms, and yet they are able to save up for better tools, new barn, etc, as long as they aren’t struggling too much year to year. And those Druidic rituals are passed down over generations. The crop yields are just more reliable, outside of Karrnath. This means that single family farms will have good years that allow them to invest in a small enchantment on their apple room that helps ensure they don’t spoil, or an enchantment that keeps bugs out of the wheat, etc.

Heck, yearly community rituals might revolve around refreshing everyone's enchantments.

I'd still have them use second-hand and homespun clothes, though, because it was the case during most of the early 20th century even ; and yet we had a cloth industry, with industrial looms, since the end of the 18th.

Exactly.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The second variant is to make it important, a part of the micromanagement.
E.g. DM you ran out of money to pay the innkeeper yesterday, yo uwil lnot have food or shelter tomorrow, (Reminder at this inn each of you needs to pay 2 sp day) You scan the local notice board and someone has a giant rat plague in their cellar and offers 50 sp for the heroes who resolve this.
To bad the fighter lost his sword in the last adventure, a new one costs 10sp at the smithy so maybe you can ask the guy with the rat problem to pay you something upfront.

So yo usee how i nthe second example a sword costing 100gp a la PHB simply is pure B***t does not work at all.

The good thing about the second method which i highly recommend and always use - of course with some homebrewed goods and services tables since the PHB is good for the trash can at this point -
is you always have a good reason for your group to go on adventures.

Homebrewing economics campaign dependant can be super fun and yo ucan think about possible complications interactions infrastructure etc. to make your setting much more realistic.

I'm also unsure where you are getting the 100gp number.

In fact, while not perfect, I've found the PHB numbers are at least consistent.

An unskilled worker makes 2 sp a day, a poor lifestyle costs 2 sp a day, and a poor inn stay plus poor meal and a mug of ale is 2 sp (which is where I assume they got the lifestlye cost).

Now, it is weird to me as a modern person to consider they only eat one meal a day, but it is consistent with the rules at least, so it works. Too vague in a lot of areas (I'm currently homebrewing my own system for a game and I'm adjusting some prices here and there to make it do what I want, but things like buying a house are not there or horridly written) but it gives me a solid starting place to tinker with.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Heck, yearly community rituals might revolve around refreshing everyone's enchantments.

For wide magic settings like Eberron, I've always loved the idea that some of the yearly rituals and festivals carry a bit of magic in them.

The new year's dance and festival actually do something to make the community slightly healthier or luckier for the year. Not a lot, just a little nudge to the world.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

The new year's dance and festival actually do something to make the community slightly healthier or luckier for the year. Not a lot, just a little nudge to the world.

If Halfling gets the lucky feat, it shouldn't be the result of genetics, but should be the result of Talentan community festivals repeated for centuries starting to produce a mechanical outcome...

 

[ChaosOS]

fwiw I've asked Keith on Twitter about textiles - here was his answer on the general production

 

[Coroc]

I'm also unsure where you are getting the 100gp number.

In fact, while not perfect, I've found the PHB numbers are at least consistent.

An unskilled worker makes 2 sp a day, a poor lifestyle costs 2 sp a day, and a poor inn stay plus poor meal and a mug of ale is 2 sp (which is where I assume they got the lifestlye cost).

Now, it is weird to me as a modern person to consider they only eat one meal a day, but it is consistent with the rules at least, so it works. Too vague in a lot of areas (I'm currently homebrewing my own system for a game and I'm adjusting some prices here and there to make it do what I want, but things like buying a house are not there or horridly written) but it gives me a solid starting place to tinker with.

also @Hawk Diesel i did get the 100gp from not looking it up. But that does not matter. 15gp officially is 150sp is 75 days of unskilled labor. A smith is skilled so he takes 2-5 times of that and needs one day for the sword so plus material and profit your sword comes to realistic 15sp and that's the way I do it in my campaign.
it is not about the absolute numbers what makes the phb prices so unrealistic it's about the relation.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

@Coroc That may be true for a laborer that lives completely alone with no means to borrow the money. But the numbers we are working with consider people that live as part of a family and community, which increases their purchasing power.

A smith is skilled so he takes 2-5 times of that and needs one day for the sword so plus material and profit your sword comes to realistic 15sp and that's the way I do it in my campaign.

I don't think you are including in there the smith's overhead. They are not just taking raw materials and making a sword. They have to buy or rent the space, pay for the tools, the fuel and effort to maintain the heat, pay for upkeep, ect. They may also have multiple people in the smithy, including apprentices that they have to pay and oversee. Finally, they have to include their cost of living for each day they toil away on their commissions, and then some profit on top of that. It reminds me of an anecdote where a business owner gets upset that they paid a few thousand dollars for a logo that took the graphic designer 15 minutes to create. And the graphic designer replies that the business owner is also paying for the graphic designer's experience that allowed them to create a good logo in 15 minutes.

Another consideration is that the guide for 2 sp per day is an average wage. That's not a hard rule that all skilled workers in an RPG setting make that much. Some make more and others make less (depending on demand for their business, access to customers, margins of profit, reputation of the worker/business ect), even within the same profession.

 

[Coroc]

@Coroc That may be true for a laborer that lives completely alone with no means to borrow the money. But the numbers we are working with consider people that live as part of a family and community, which increases their purchasing power.



I don't think you are including in there the smith's overhead. They are not just taking raw materials and making a sword. They have to buy or rent the space, pay for the tools, the fuel and effort to maintain the heat, pay for upkeep, ect. They may also have multiple people in the smithy, including apprentices that they have to pay and oversee. Finally, they have to include their cost of living for each day they toil away on their commissions, and then some profit on top of that. It reminds me of an anecdote where a business owner gets upset that they paid a few thousand dollars for a logo that took the graphic designer 15 minutes to create. And the graphic designer replies that the business owner is also paying for the graphic designer's experience that allowed them to create a good logo in 15 minutes.

Another consideration is that the guide for 2 sp per day is an average wage. That's not a hard rule that all skilled workers in an RPG setting make that much. Some make more and others make less (depending on demand for their business, access to customers, margins of profit, reputation of the worker/business ect), even within the same profession.

Still the relation does not fit, how do you fail to see this?

If we take the standard high middle ages setting as a base then 1gp is about 100 $ compared to our time in what it can buy. People sometimes where in the plight to buy themselves a weapon to serve as an emergency militia.
Let us take a battle axe, although somewhat more expensive than a woodcutter axe its make is quite similar.
It is 10g as per PHB equivalent of 1000 $
Let us asume a woodcutters axe costs half of it then it would be 500$. Back then it was handcrafted, but labor was much cheaper, so it is comparable with todays price which would be some 20 - 30 $ at the toolstore most. And today you got all intermediate sellers taking their share etc.

No one could afford a weapon if the PHB prices were real! They could not even afford a tool!
20 arrows 1gp! Are they mad???

But the solution is totally simple just make it silver for all the weapons and armor instead of gold and everything fits together once more.

A maul 10gp = 1000$! That is a simple tool, english longbowmen took these along to build their tents and its second use was to crack open the plate armor of a downed mounted knight.
Every archer would be like "oh i grab the big hammer, desert, sell it of and then i am a rich man for the next months"

Edit here is a cite from myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.25025.html by a James Barker:

15th C England basically went like this:
You had "li, s, d" or "pounds, shillings, and pence". 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings, or 240 pence, in a pound.
Average sword was a pound.
Average person made 2 pence a day; so 120 days of labor for a sword.
Skilled Labor could make 4-6d a day, someone like a stone mason.
Archers made 6d a day on campaign so 40 days of campaigning for a sword.

Helmet cost about the same.

a pound is 20 shilling = 20 silver =1g (historical), so a sword was 1g which is far nearer to my 15s than your and PHBs 15g
The average labor is even cheaper, but skilled labour is about 2-3x what phb states for unskilled so my guess was also good here.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

Still the relation does not fit, how do you fail to see this?

It's not that I don't see it. I think obviously I must see some issues in the economy of Eberron in particular and D&D in general in order to start and engage in this conversation. But I think maybe we are focused on different aspects of the problem, or different (but related) problems altogether. We also may be coming in with different assumptions that color our perspectives.

People sometimes where in the plight to buy themselves a weapon to serve as an emergency militia.
Let us take a battle axe, although somewhat more expensive than a woodcutter axe its make is quite similar.
It is 10g as per PHB equivalent of 1000 $
Let us asume a woodcutters axe costs half of it then it would be 500$. Back then it was handcrafted, but labor was much cheaper, so it is comparable with todays price which would be some 20 - 30 $ at the toolstore most. And today you got all intermediate sellers taking their share etc.

So I see things a bit differently here.

1) I would assume that most people don't have martial training, especially in a volunteer or emergency militia. So I don't think they would be using a battleaxe due to lack of proficiency.

2) More likely, an emergency militia wouldn't have time to purchase or commission weapons. They would be repurposing tools that they already have access to for weapons. Clubs, woodaxes, pitchforks, ect. According to the PHB, if an object looks like or functions similar to a an existing weapon, a character could treat it as such, including proficiency (if they have it) and damage. So tools could be used in place of nearly any simple weapon.

3) I would say tools are much less expensive than weapons, even ones that are similar to weapons. From my perspective, a woodcutter's axe is different enough from a battleaxe that it wouldn't be half as much, as you suggest, but a tenth the price. Now I'm no weapons expert or anything, but my gut tells me that while lots of weapons could be used as tools, you would not want to use your weapons as tools. Could a battleaxe chop wood in a pinch? Sure. Is the soldier going to ruin their weapon if they cut too much wood with it? Probably. Would a woodcutter want one to use professionally? Doubtful. And that goes vice versa as well. Tools and weapons can be similar, but they aren't the same. Once again, not an expert, but I imagine that they are weighted differently, made to sustain forces differently, and have different maintenance requirements.

20 arrows 1gp! Are they mad???

Yea, that probably is too much for the economy perspective of the game. But I see this as important for game balance. We often see on these boards the arguments of the superiority of dexterity and ranged weapons. And one of the ways this should be balanced is by the fact that ranged attacks should have a limited shelf-life before that archer has to wade into combat like the other grunts around them. But 1 gp for 20 arrows isn't breaking the bank for the PCs either, so I see it as a compromise that fails on both ends.

But the solution is totally simple just make it silver for all the weapons and armor instead of gold and everything fits together once more.

A maul 10gp = 1000$! That is a simple tool, english longbowmen took these along to build their tents and its second use was to crack open the plate armor of a downed mounted knight.
Every archer would be like "oh i grab the big hammer, desert, sell it of and then i am a rich man for the next months"

Edit here is a cite from myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.25025.html by a James Barker:

15th C England basically went like this:
You had "li, s, d" or "pounds, shillings, and pence". 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings, or 240 pence, in a pound.
Average sword was a pound.
Average person made 2 pence a day; so 120 days of labor for a sword.
Skilled Labor could make 4-6d a day, someone like a stone mason.
Archers made 6d a day on campaign so 40 days of campaigning for a sword.

Helmet cost about the same.

a pound is 20 shilling = 20 silver =1g (historical), so a sword was 1g which is far nearer to my 15s than your and PHBs 15g
The average labor is even cheaper, but skilled labour is about 2-3x what phb states for unskilled so my guess was also good here.

Even assuming that your source is accurate, as you are citing a forum post, this seems to contradict your argument above:

also @Hawk Diesel i did get the 100gp from not looking it up. But that does not matter. 15gp officially is 150sp is 75 days of unskilled labor. A smith is skilled so he takes 2-5 times of that and needs one day for the sword so plus material and profit your sword comes to realistic 15sp and that's the way I do it in my campaign.
it is not about the absolute numbers what makes the phb prices so unrealistic it's about the relation.

By your own estimate, by the PHB standard it requires about 75 days of unskilled labor to afford the average martial weapon. Based on your source, the average skilled laborer made 5 pence a day which required 48 days of labor for a sword (a sword costing 1 pound, or 240 pence, thus 240 pence divided by 5 pence earned in a day of labor). Your citation doesn't state the kind of sword. Assuming a shortsword is the most common kind of sword (valued at 10 gp, or 100 silver), it would take a skilled laborer 50 days of labor to purchase based on the PHB. Your source lines up very nicely with the prices listed in the PHB by the gold value.

EDIT: Actually, I made a mistake. Per the PHB, a skilled laborer earns 2 gp per day. This means a skilled laborer would have enough to buy a shortsword in 5 days, whereas in your source cited above, a similarly skilled laborer would require almost 10 times that amount in labor to afford a sword. This would indicate that it is far more affordable for someone living in an RPG to buy a weapon than it was in the real world in medieval times.