you've sold me on not changing the pay rate.
I think the last problem is the crime-temptation of a small village whacking the PCs while they sleep and taking their stuff because the 100+GP worth of loot they carry is worth so much to them (pretty much all the evaluations show that the starting cash a PC gets is significant to a poor person, ceteris paribus.
Fear.
Yes, a group of commoners can kill low-level PCs... But how many die in the attempt? How many are going to be talked into attacking a group of well-armed and armored warriors, mages, etc.?
Remember that even in a highly magical economy your only recompense for death is worth 32 years of a common laborer's entire life savings
. The individuals are probably on a mission from a liege lord of some sort, and unless hiding their allegiances are going to be known for it.
So we have eliminated the average laborer... But what about a brigand? A band of brigands... Hrmm, let us look into that as a Platoon. I feel that 11-20 War 1 Brigands is about right, along with their command structures (2 3rd level Warriors, and a 3-6th level character). Let us max everything out and consider our Leader as a PC spellcaster, just for giggles.
Total "Wages": 336 GP. This is the wages listed in Stronghold Builder's Guide.
Total Upkeep (Poor): 276 GP.
Total Upkeep (Meager): 115 GP.
That is quite a bit of cash to be made for selling off stolen equipment, but they live well. To be able to 'break even' for it being worthwhile to steal for ALL individuals involved you need to steal around 672 GP worth of goods to sell at half price (not even getting into Fencing rules here... We'll just go half), and a 'lean month' would need to have available assets of 115 GP OR make about 230 GP worth of stolen goods.
A cart carrying 1/2 ton of grain is
worth 238 GP by weight before we get it to market. If you have 2 mules pulling your cart (8 GP), the cart (15 GP), and requirements (silken rope, poles, lantern, 'walking money') we'll bring ourselves up to... 300 GP? 320?
That sells for half of the value (150-160 GP) which is a couple of weeks worth of haul.
A couple of wheat wagons during harvest time can keep you alive during the winter as a band. Merchant carts (which are going to vary widely across the line) will put more brass in pocket...
But then we have adventurers. If the 'leader' is there a nice quick Fireball clears your 1st-going-into-2nd level party off the map... They're clearing less than 1800 GP if all of your wealth is in equipment. That's a great set of wages... But there is also body disposal, explaining having this spellbook.... That sort of thing. Which is why I'm not getting into the criminal side of economics
.
The Bandits have a payroll. If they are strictly 'just bandits' living in the woods? They have a heavy burden to seek out small targets of opportunity in the general area, and transport out the goods to markets away from their origin point.
If the bandits bump off two grain wagons a month supplemented by the occasional merchant caravan they can definitely keep themselves at at least their normal wages. But we consider bandits to be the 'high end' of things? Lots of $$$, rolling in women and
+1 Daggers, drinking games using Boots of Striding and Springing for glasses...
Nope. I consider your average bandit akin to a
low-level drug dealer. I linked to the opening of Chapter 3 of Freakonomics entitled "Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live with Their Moms?"... And provides some impressive statistics from Venkatesh's studies of a large-scale drug supply chain in a metropolitan region (Editing to eliminate specific drug soldier information, emphases mine).
Along with the bad pay, the foot soldiers faced terrible job conditions. . . Foot soldiers also risked arrest and, more worrisome, violence. Using the gang’s financial documents and the rest of Venkatesh’s research, it is possible to construct an adverse-events index of J. T.’s gang during the four years in question.
The results are astonishingly bleak. If you were a member of J. T.’s gang for all four years, here is the typical fate you would have faced during that period:
Number of times arrested 5.9
Number of nonfatal wounds or injuries 2.4 (not including injuries meted out by the gang itself for rules violations)
Chance of being killed 1 in 4
This is just in the process of dealing drugs, without any threats of violence being necessary to the instigation of the transaction! A quarter of the gang's soldiers are killed, and the full numbers show (if I recall correctly) the data on the average time between events in the gang... Does not look good
.
In short, the life of a bandit sounds great! Earn lots of money, bump off wagons... But who says that your leader is going to actually give you your full 'cut'? As I stated above the difference between Poor and Meager life is over 150 GP. The temptation, during good times and bad, to short the men will always be there... On average foot soldiers made 3.00/hr while the Leader cleared hundreds of thousands of dollars!
And a bandit really can't LEAVE the job outside of a pine box or mutual agreement/assured destruction. He knows too much...
The life of your bandit is pretty much hinged on making more and more raids, and more raids brings more adventurers... and better ones. Ranging across larger areas to do more hits spreads out your band, then recon, picking targets, execution... There's a lot of work for very, very little reward for our bandits unless they're hitting multiple small targets a week (the safe bet until adventurers are called), or targeting a couple of fat targets a quarter (which leads to having to sell high-priced items as you raised... And more danger).
In short: Safety is in numbers and respective power. Most bandits are going to be weak and not want to risk their lives for the best shots, and there's always top skim.
Slainte,
-Loonook.
