Hazards of Hookers and Problems with Prostitutes

[Henry]

Not to bring a downer to the talk of prostitutes, but a gold piece is not necessarily pure gold, just as in history. More likely, it's around 14K by mass/weight or so (around 50% - 60% pure). If a gold piece were pure gold, it would never stand up to the stress of being used as currency.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

You're equating the value of gold in modern economics with the value in a world where gold pieces is a prime currency. Gold is far more rare today that it was 100 or 200 years ago. People have far less gold/ silver than our ancestors.

Not to bring a downer to the talk of prostitutes, but a gold piece is not necessarily pure gold, just as in history. More likely, it's around 14K by mass/weight or so (around 50% - 60% pure). If a gold piece were pure gold, it would never stand up to the stress of being used as currency.

Even if you break it down into a comparison of bartering values, those numbers do not work.

Even if you're not a big fan of goats, seven thousand of them is too much to pay for a prostitute's services, even if you're fantastically, ridiculously wealthy.

Take a fifth level Expert, with a slightly above average Wisdom (12, let's say), Skill Focus and max ranks in Profession. By D&D standards, he's a fairly wealthy individual, earning an average of 11 gold per week. Assume he works fifty weeks a year, and you're looking at 550 gold per year.

Fourteen times his annual salary should be more money than even the medieval-fantasy equivalent of Heidi Fleiss should be able to charge the King for a night with one of her girls.

 

[reanjr]

Problem is, you can't loosely equate a gold piece with a dollar. That's insane.

Weren't the last real gold coins in the US $20 pieces?

In any case, you can buy a single goat for a single gold piece. Quick search online, and the cheapest goats I can find were wethers-- castrated billy goats-- for $40. Breeding goats ranged from $350 to $500.

I can easily imagine a prostitute who can charge $7000 a night. I have a much harder time picturing $280000 per night, and I simply cannot imagine $3.5 million per.

50 gold pieces is a pound of gold, which would be around $6848. That puts the gold piece at around $136.96.

Even by the weird standards of D&D economics, those numbers are nonsensical.

edit: I should hope that an aging half-orc with no applicable skills would cost less than $100/night. Still, the average cost shouldn't be in the thousands of dollars.

But serfs (D&D commoner) are dirt poor. Middle class citizens would make a lot more. Average highest level NPC Commoner is about 13th, and, if applied to their work, could make about 14 gp/week (assuming they do something they are good at and take some ranks in Craft or Profession). Since most other classes make more (even if they aren't as high level), this seems a reasonable median (since there are also aristocrats who would dwarf the income of all the commoners in town). 14 gp/week is 728 gp/year.

It's within an order of magnitude of being about right, which is really all you can ask for when you are creating a table to generate costs of prostitutes.

 

[Henry]

OK, one thing - it assumes you're looking at "Medieval fantasy" with the same economic eye as "Medieval History", which may not be the case. If you were doing that, you'd be on a silver standard (first), and even if converting to silver many prices would be out of whack as you note (second). However, looking at a D&D setting with a more modern eye will turn up comparisons to modern value for services. Remember that the value of "services rendered" has gone WAAAAY up in the past 100 years or so, because among other reasons, it's one thing that's much harder to automate than production of goods and services is. A visit to a salon can't be mass-produced; even haircuts can't be mass-produced, although the process can be emulated. (An "army haircut" is mass-produced haircut, but the majority of people don't want one. )

Even if you're not a big fan of goats, seven thousand of them is too much to pay for a prostitute's services, even if you're fantastically, ridiculously wealthy.

There's no place anywhere you can buy a high-class callgirl's services for 7,000 goats, except for... unusual... circumstances.

Fourteen times his annual salary should be more money than even the medieval-fantasy equivalent of Heidi Fleiss should be able to charge the King for a night with one of her girls.

However, it seems that the value of a "working girl" in the Medieval period was significantly less than in the modern day, and I'm not sure there's anything in historical analogue to compare to "call girls" of modern times. A "girl" was a "girl" was a "girl", until the past 50 years or so, to my knowledge.

 

[Viktyr Gehrig]

OK, one thing - it assumes you're looking at "Medieval fantasy" with the same economic eye as "Medieval History", which may not be the case. If you were doing that, you'd be on a silver standard (first), and even if converting to silver many prices would be out of whack as you note (second).

Yeah. I'd expect Medieval prices (whether fantasy or historical) to be way out-of-line with similar goods and services in the modern real world. I don't bat an eye at swords costing the equivalent of thousands of dollars, because they were both milspec equipment and individually hand-crafted in those days.

It's when they're out of line with all semblance of sanity or sense that they start to annoy me.

There's no place anywhere you can buy a high-class callgirl's services for 7,000 goats, except for... unusual... circumstances.

I'm just thinking that, should I suddenly desire such services, I could acquire them for less than the equivalent value of a single goat-- maybe not for a trained professional with rare physical virtues, but certainly for the average professional in the field.

For the full value of a single goat, I should certainly be able to do better than an aging half-orc with no applicable skills.

However, it seems that the value of a "working girl" in the Medieval period was significantly less than in the modern day, and I'm not sure there's anything in historical analogue to compare to "call girls" of modern times. A "girl" was a "girl" was a "girl", until the past 50 years or so, to my knowledge.

Doesn't this argument support my position that those listed prices are entirely too high?

 

[Henry]

Doesn't this argument support my position that those listed prices are entirely too high?

It supports that they're too high if modeling a Medieval culture, but if modeling a more modern one, where services are more valued, then they're not out of line, just as 2,500 gp (more than most kings had in those days in fluid wealth, much less wealth) models the price of a Cloak that makes you hide better.

 

[Rel]

This is why economics majors never get invited to orgies.

Just to give my 2CP (just enough to rent the lower half of an aging Half-Orc with no sexual skills!) on the cost of "companionship" issue it is thus:

First, it is no big secret that PC's in the average D&D game rapidly begin to operate on a financial level that is way beyond the comprehension of the average citizen. To the commoner, why a person would spend enough money on a potion that heals 1d8+1 HP (the same amount of damage the average person could heal by just spending a few days resting up) that they could live well on for a year and a half is just mind-boggling. This is what makes "adventurer" a separate class of individual in Eberron. To the average person, the life of an Adventurer is very nearly insane. They risk death on an almost daily basis for unimaginable sums of money that they then use to purchase items that have almost no usefulness in daily living but might (just might) extend their lifespan by a few months. KRAZY!

It is not primarily to this adventuring set that the "Ladies of the Night" in Sharn are catering. They cater (at the lowest levels) to the working stiffs () and sailors just in from the Dagger River. They cater (at the highest levels) to the power-elite of the city.

The problem (in my opinion) is that the range of prices reflected in S: CoT is that you see the "base rate" for "companionship" set at 5CP (in Sharn's Welcome) and a maximum price (in Firelight) of 12CP. That's just a bit over a doubling in price for services that I would imagine would vary rather substantially in quality and "class". The price range ought to (again, in my opinion) vary by at least an order of magnitude.

Am I going to restructure the "Cost of Companionship" price table in the book? No. Because I just don't think this is going to come up that often in the course of the game and when it does it is still a vanishingly small portion of the PC's total wealth. Even if I increased the price of the high end call girls by a hundred times it would be 12GP, which (at nearly 3rd level) is not an entirely trivial sum of money for the PC's but is still no big deal.

However, if the matter should come up again, I'll probably bump the prices of the "mid-range" hookers to 4SP or so and make the upper end be around 20SP. I think this helps to differentiate the services they offer from the whores who hang out in the alleys by the docks.

If I'd recognized this a bit earlier it would have lended a bit of realism to one of the plot points from the last adventure. It was understood that an NPC the party had encountered had gotten himself into financial trouble because of his penchant for making use of the services offered at Ellabella's. When the PC's got there and I read them the prices from the book they were like, "He spent himself into the poorhouse at 15CP a pop?! He must have been screwing 24/7/336! Did he have a limp when we first saw him?"

If I'd bumped the price to around 20SP then it might have made a bit more sense.

 

[jerichothebard]

Not to bring a downer to the talk of prostitutes, but a gold piece is not necessarily pure gold, just as in history. More likely, it's around 14K by mass/weight or so (around 50% - 60% pure). If a gold piece were pure gold, it would never stand up to the stress of being used as currency.

Actually, based on the weight and sizes listed in the PHB, it's not even close. They're more like tin with a bit of gold paint dabbed on them.

They have a real-size illo of a gp, that's an inch across, and they are supposedly 50/lb. In pure gold, they'd have to be a fraction of an inch thin.

If someone wants to fix D&D economics, start by fixing the currency.

 

[jerichothebard]

However, it seems that the value of a "working girl" in the Medieval period was significantly less than in the modern day, and I'm not sure there's anything in historical analogue to compare to "call girls" of modern times. A "girl" was a "girl" was a "girl", until the past 50 years or so, to my knowledge.

well, I would say the last two hundred, really - witness some of the Dumas' writings, about Camille (La Traviata/Moulin Rouge's storyline, set more than 50 years ago!) and some of the women in the Three Musketeers.

 

[Desdichado]

They have a real-size illo of a gp, that's an inch across, and they are supposedly 50/lb. In pure gold, they'd have to be a fraction of an inch thin.

Uhh.... coins are a fraction of an inch thin. What am I missing?