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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 377238" data-attributes="member: 4937">Look, I know some of us have impressive understandings of history and medieval economics.   We are gamer geeks for crying out loud.  We've consumed 1000's of pages on the subject, and we probably could model manorial economies right down to the number of cords of wood that have to be cut per year per person given a certain average yearly temperature and the presence of iron plows.But that would be entirely missing the point.  If we did that, we'd have to rewrite 30% of the game or better.  Not that you can't or shouldn't (I'm inclinced to), but you should start blithely tossing out that the average daily wage was in Burgundy in 1349, or how many bushels of seed could be yeilded per acre by a farmer with oxen and a broadcast method of planting UNLESS you state flatly that you are indeed rewriting 30% of the rules to take into account the more realistic economic system for the period technology you believe exist.Because simply stating defacto that the average wage for unskilled laborers is 1 s.p. and that commoners don't have profession skills (never mind that the profession skill is broken as written, but that is a topic for another day) is going to get you into a world of gaming hurt if you don't arrange the whole rest of the economic system to account for it.For example, lets say that you do believe that the average yearly buying power of a peasant is 18 g.p. per annum minus 6 g.p. of taxes (and effective taxes like corvey, fees, etc.) because you decide to use the much more realistic 1:20 gold to silver ratio that held through much of history.   Well, you are then going to have to figure out how the farmer gets by on the equivalent 'wages' (of grain and so forth) on 12 g.p. a year given the prices listed in every published product I've seen (Most of which were assigned according to utility not according to the ammount of labor required to craft them or other economic factors.  If it is useful, then it must be expensive *rolls eyes*).   And then, how is it that your economy is able to support the activities of your mage who has to spend hundreds and often 1000's of g.p. on a single magic item, and enormous ammounts on thier spell book?   The PC party is either going to be a walking source of hyperinflation or else you are going to have to get by with a low magic campaign (with the result of the PC's effective CR being lower than their level would indicate) or else you are going to have to rewrite the cost creating magic items and buying spells.   And what about the supposed party wealth of a party of 10th level characters (merely mid level in 3rd edition).   Do you realize how much labor they can leverage with a few hundred thousand gold peices?  Thousands of peasants can be theres to hire for years.   And are we to assume that they are the only people with that kind of cash to throw around?  And if they are, why is labor so damn cheap, and how do there opponents afford such wonderful toys?Finally, to those that say that commoners wouldn't put as many skill ranks into some means of livlihood as they could, obviously are used to the soft living of some first world country and haven't lived in the third world (or worked with for instance Mexican migrant farm workers).  In an improvished economy, you either work or starve.  I've seen third world people have a whole variaty of self defeating and self destructive cultural practices, but I don't think I've seen that many lazy ones.</blockquote>

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