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Message: <blockquote data-quote="S'mon" data-source="post: 1541449" data-attributes="member: 463">OK, this was your big mistake IMO.  Whoever heard of anyone in a D&D game paying the common sailors on their ship *40gp/month**?!  Or paying all the common cooks in their castle 40 gp/month?!  That's vastly out of whack with the hireling costs in the DMG, which is what you should have been paying attention to, not to the Craft/Profession skill in the PHB, which is aimed purely at _player characters_, not at DMs trying to develop a plausible world!The PHB Craft/Profession income can be slotted into the DMG hireling-cost tables, but it clearly represents the income of a skilled artisan, a head cook, a ship-master - ie the **Middle Class** of the campaign setting, not the masses of unskilled labourers, maidservants, cooks and common sailors, who are earning around 1/10 to 1/5 the figures you quote.In the real high-medieval period this middle class made up around 5% of the population in England (Town Planner, Paul Vernon, BoWD Articles III).  It could make up a higher proportion of a Forgotten Realms or Mystara-style D&D society, but treating it as the _baseline_ is bound to give results grotesquely out-of-whack with the unskilled-labour costs represented by the DMG hireling tables.</blockquote>