I know that I am probably the ony person in the world who is bothered by the things like this but...
Have you noticed that, in DnD world, average labourer needs to work 20 days (and not eat) in order to buy the empty barrel or a crowbar. That the daily wage will buy you a poor meals for the day (for one person) but not lodgings of any sort.
Despite of that however, in a village *at any given time* amount of "ready cash" per capita exceedes what a trained craftsman earns in a month and in a large town excedes what a simmilar craftsman earns in a year. And that there is enough "ready cash" in an average small town at any given time to purchase a warship.
On a same count a city of 30000 (less then the size of medieval London and 1/3 of such places as Venice and Genua) has enough ready cash to hire mercenary army of 1.5 Milion men in the case of emergency, retain them for a year and still have enough left to finance the puchase of roughly 3000 warships.
On a more every day scale 1st level NPC's gear (200gp) is of enough value to hire 20men+leader mercenary company and retain them for about two months. Alternative is however to purchace 50' of chain.
On the topic of chain, a full suit of chain mail, (easily over 30.000 rings, work of over a month for master armourer with full shop of assistants) costs roughly as much as 50 feet of chain (250 rings, blacksmith's work of a couple of days).
And so on and so on.
This sort of stuff makes building anything resembling a believable setting neigh impossible...
Have you noticed that, in DnD world, average labourer needs to work 20 days (and not eat) in order to buy the empty barrel or a crowbar. That the daily wage will buy you a poor meals for the day (for one person) but not lodgings of any sort.
Despite of that however, in a village *at any given time* amount of "ready cash" per capita exceedes what a trained craftsman earns in a month and in a large town excedes what a simmilar craftsman earns in a year. And that there is enough "ready cash" in an average small town at any given time to purchase a warship.
On a same count a city of 30000 (less then the size of medieval London and 1/3 of such places as Venice and Genua) has enough ready cash to hire mercenary army of 1.5 Milion men in the case of emergency, retain them for a year and still have enough left to finance the puchase of roughly 3000 warships.
On a more every day scale 1st level NPC's gear (200gp) is of enough value to hire 20men+leader mercenary company and retain them for about two months. Alternative is however to purchace 50' of chain.
On the topic of chain, a full suit of chain mail, (easily over 30.000 rings, work of over a month for master armourer with full shop of assistants) costs roughly as much as 50 feet of chain (250 rings, blacksmith's work of a couple of days).
And so on and so on.
This sort of stuff makes building anything resembling a believable setting neigh impossible...