Slave prices

[Iron_Chef]

Conan the RPG has slave prices, but the Hyborian Age setting uses a silver standard. For standard high fantasy settings that use a gold standard, simply change sp to gp.

SLAVE PRICES IN THE HYBORIAN AGE
150 sp female, high born, educated, beautiful
60 sp female, beautiful
30 sp female, common
15 sp male, hard-working, submissive
8 sp male, work-shy criminal
5 sp male, rebellious savage

Slaves bought to order cost double, but the buyer can specify hair, eye, skin color, nationality and physique.

Conan setting note: In Turan, Hyrkanian slavers have so flooded the market with produce, that all prices are 1/10 normal.

 

[Nightfall]

Burok Torn dwarves, I'd give them 5 gp each. Human male or female, 5 silvers unless they are adventures. 1 gp/per class level. 2 if they are spellcasters of some stripe. Half elves from Termana, 8 silvers. Halflings 5 coppers. A true elf (or forsaken elf), 3 gp and 1 gp extra/per class level (adventuring not NPC class.)

Exotic animals, say like a mock dragon, 5 gp to 100 gp depending on the CR, type and breeding. Magical animals obviously much higher. Troll Horses, at least a kingly sum.

That help?

 

[d4]

Until they locked him up in his own palace and took over the country, that is….

well, yes, there is that. i think the Mamelukes ended up ruling Egypt longer than the dynasty they toppled...

I'm thinking more along the lines of 20 - 30 years of wages.

that's much too much for the cost of buying a slave. remember that the owner has to provide food, clothing, shelter, everything for a slave. i would suspect that if you added up the whole cost of a slave to his owner over the slave's lifetime, it would reach that high. but if the prospective buyer has to pay that much up front and then also pay upkeep for the rest of the slave's life, it just wouldn't be cost-effective.

if it's not cost-effective, people will go with free workers as opposed to slaves. however, many cultures throughout history did use slaves as opposed to free workers, so it should be safe to assume that it was cost-effective for them to do so. (and thus, the initial buying price of slaves was fairly low.)

 

[Nightfall]

Course training a dwarven metal worker isn't easy, but hey you get a few mid-high level chardunite priests involved, especially from either the Army or Dominion Church, you'll be fine.

 

[tarchon]

For a grown woman? : 32 gp

For a healthy and strong man? : 40 gp

How much for a trained professional? : maybe 80-120 gp.

I agree generally with those prices, but there usually was a significant premium associated with good looking female slaves and frequently with good looking young male slaves as well. The "trained professional" premium could get quite high - I recall a physician-slave in the Roman empire could command 50 times the price for an average slave, and you know some of those Greek slaves that ran the Imperial administrations had to be worth fortunes (and many of them had fortunes of their own). For those types, purchasing a slave was more like buying out his contract.

 

[S'mon]

Keep in mind the bit on standard of living in the DMG... (variant: upkeep cost)

Yeah, it's a variant, but I think it meshes with the rules, even if people don't bother.

Essentially, the lowest cost of living is 2 gp/month, just to barely get by. Common laborers are paid 3 gp/month.

So slaves will probably cost at _least_ 1 gp/month to keep barely alive (work them until they drop dead), and 2 gp/month to work as field hands. Slaves with better hygeine will probably need more.

Just something to add to the calculations.

This is a very important point - the D&D 1sp/day cost of hiring a labourer seems to be just over subsistence level, which implies that the setting has a labour surplus, like Europe before the Black Death. In such a setting slaves will be cheap, in fact slaveholding may be uneconomical - slavery died out in Norman England pretty much for this reason, the Norman feudal system made slavery inefficient, whereas it persisted in Wales, Ireland and Scotland until those areas came under Norman domination centuries later.

If it costs 2gp/month to keep someone alive & healthy enough to work, and you can get free labourers for 3gp/month, you're only saving 1gp/month - and that's before any additional cost of guards, overseers and such. A typical adult slave in a realistic setting won't be producing 50 years of useful work, either - 10-20 is more likely. Unless there are economic reasons why slavery is efficient - eg cotton-picking requires intensive human labour - slaves will not be valuable.

 

[Dogbrain]

I agree generally with those prices, but there usually was a significant premium associated with good looking female slaves and frequently with good looking young male slaves as well. The "trained professional" premium could get quite high - I recall a physician-slave in the Roman empire could command 50 times the price for an average slave, and you know some of those Greek slaves that ran the Imperial administrations had to be worth fortunes (and many of them had fortunes of their own). For those types, purchasing a slave was more like buying out his contract.

Legend has it that Diogenes (the Philosopher credited with developing systematic Cynicism) actually haggled his own purchase price higher. When asked what he could do, his reply was "I train kings!"

 

[Alenda]

Just so you know, in the Freeport setting slavery is illegal.

Yes, well... I tweaked history a little to better fit in with the character histories of my players.