Storminator:
Again, there is little evidence outside urban myth than 'hardline' guilds existed. They are not mentioned in any reliable historical medieval accounts of that period. The existence of guilds was mainly to ensure quality of manufacture, to protect its members from disturbances and as a social gathering. Like a 'pseudo-trade-union' (although of course in reality quite different).
Most of the manufacture in the medieval period was not done by the guilds, who did not resemble modern corporations (and certainly did not resemble the Mafia) but by small craftsmen, who trained apprentices to take over when they retired/died. The reason why most peasants didn't become craftsmen was not because some guilds would go and break their legs (for one, the local lords and church would not tolerate this, and the power of merchant guilds compared to the authorities was insignificant in this period; in DnD, neither good nor lawful rulers will tolerate this behaviour). Rather, it was due to the lack of suitable education.
Now, in DnD, *everyone* has some form of education. These are represented by those handy things, skill points. The average human peasant has 12 skill points. Given the commoner skill list, it is highly likely than he will end up putting at least a few into Craft and/or Profession. In turn, this will result in a respectable wage.
Other points:
I'd also bet wealthy individuals would be more than willing to zealously give to their nearest temple in their desparate hopes of escaping the flames of the abyss
They did anyway in medieval times, in order to escape 'eternal damnation'.
The Church of feudal Europe was practically an auxiliary government - no reason to treat it separately from the rest of the aristocrats
One thing people always overlook when comparing medieval Europe with DnD is that DnD is polytheistic. Thus, with the exception of the domination of non-human races by their respective deities, it is unlikely that a single church will have nearly as much influence as the medieval Catholic Church. A better model would be classical Greece, where the deities were certainly highly respected, but not insofar as each individual church was an auxiliary government.
The wealth disparity was enormous. Much like it is in most DnD towns.
Demographic evidence suggests that wealth disparity was less in a pre-industrial society. This is because nearly everyone was impoverished, rather than a middle-class/workers dichotomy. Of course, your other salient point still holds.
Peasants do not get 1sp/day. Unskilled labourers are paid 1sp/day, there's a _big_ difference. A peasant has land he farms. In a medieval society no unskilled labourer could afford to maintain a family, which is why until modern times only 1/3 of the population ever married.
Aside from numerous references to other professions earning 1sp per day (cook, maid, labourer, porter); the fact is that most people is most medieval societies did not own land. Serfs would till the land for the lord, and get paid an amount for it. As for the marriage anecdote, this is pure invention. Cliometricians in the 1970s built a model of medieval society using church records and the like, and the marriage figure is nearly universal. The fundamental reason is that marriage tended to increase prosperity, due to the double-wage effect: the Rowntree report on Victorian poverty corroborates this.
Conclusion:
x5 wages
.
