thanks to [MENTION=1861]Loonook[/MENTION] for doing a ton of research. Folks may not reach the same conclusion as him, but I suspect he now knows more about the subject than most of us.
Here's some thoughts:
if we're looking at money as compared to what poor D&D peasants make to poor people in the US, don't compare to minimum wage. The majority of people making minimum wage (officially) are high school kids. Most adults are making more than that, which is why political discussions about raising the minimum wage are moot.
A better comparison to modern americans are migrant workers (who are NOT making minimum wage) or people who are completely dependent on government assistance (welfare). Political exageration asside about poor people with fancy cars (as in fraud), real poor people getting welfare checks and food stamps are getting less than minimum wage equivalency.
Basically, if we imagine that 1/sp a day being the lowest paying job AND having to survive on it, what's the worst living conditions to compare to where somebody is getting money, is surviving, but not doing well at all.
Nextly, consider what all this thinking about economics is for. While [MENTION=6670763]Yora[/MENTION] had a point that a PC isn't really going to notice 3cp missing from his pouch, the observation that poor NPCs can't be handing out 5gp swords or even 100gp rewards.
Additionally, PCs riding into town are going to look like easy pickings to such poor people. Even a 1st level PC before he's left for his first dungeon is toting a lot of expensive gear, compared to what the paupers have.
there's been other threads on the topic, including ones where we calculated how much D&D money you need to make to afford to eat and sleep based on prices from the PH.
I believe the objective of any such effort should be:
- don't overcomplicate things or fret about that which the PCs won't notice anyway
- Come up with the simplest resolution/fewest changes
- Focus more on preventing abuse, than anything else
From that, I would consider that:
- it would be a lot of work to shift the economy down to silver/coppers being important to PCs
- it would be unfun to have every poor NPC be highly motivated to rob the PCs
- poor NPCs and commodity prices are out of scale with the GP economy that PCs and rich NPCs live in
A simple fix MIGHT be to simply upgrade the pay for NPCs from SP/day to GP/day. A regular working making 1GP a day isn't so envious of your 30GP weapon. One could surmise that the very poor (homeless, etc) are making less than 1GP/day, but regular people are "fine".
By bringing the day's wages to 1 GP/day for unskilled labor you need to then advance the pricing of other common jobs and the cost of equipment.
If our Smith from above maintains the same Craft rules he is now paying 7-35 GP/day (if we figure no weekend), or 5-25 GP/day in costs.
You just crashed the efficacy of Craft for individual weapons as the system becomes cost ineffective if employing hired hands.
You've also raised all individuals in the city to Poverty rather than Self-Sufficiency.
Oh, and (if you figure based on my earlier argument around the poverty line) you have raised our 6 person family to a level of prosperity unheard of in the Medieval World.
The economic model, beside spellcasting and the occasional third party material, really does hang well... The Adventurer really does not screw with the economy of a city large enough for them to get proper interaction at their level... And even in smaller cities and towns the PCs are not really throwing anything off kilter through their actions.
The best way to go about it is to think that the PCs operate in a kind of economic status. They are individuals who provide their own equipment, make far more money in their short life periods than an average individual, and can use that money in a lot of ways.
PCs are mercenaries. [US Figures ahead] Do you know that the average in-country pay for mercenaries in current conflicts with 5 years of honorable duty is around $600/day? A Sergeant (E-5) at that same time in the Service clears $88/day, before all factors [fire pay, various pay increases due to family, etc].
Now a Soldier in D&D (War 1) makes 6 GP/mo/lvl for his basic rate... but an Adventurer with class levels gains 30 GP/mo/lvl.
The basic rates for comparison are about right. I'm just saying that the current rates would go up to 6 PP/mo/lvl and 30 pp/mo/lvl, and we start getting into some issues .
Slainte,
-Loonook.