D&D 5E What Sort Of Income For Commoners To Get A Coherent Economy?

[doctorbadwolf]

So, lets assume for a moment that we are considering a world wherein the PCs are not exceptionally wealth until at least pretty high level, normally. Where PCs can't really break the economy simply by spending gold. (ignoring spells that could break the economy, for this thread)

What would be have to inflate the wages and prices in the core books to in order to get this sort of world, assuming either of these two;

1) Loot as per the DMG tables

2) Half as much loot as the DMG tables

 

[zarionofarabel]

A beggar on the street would need to make several GP per day.

 

[DemoMonkey]

Do PCs actually break the economy now?

I mean, in actual practice. If the PCs roll into town with a wagon full of coin, they probably blow it all on magic items and consumables (if that is for sale), buy up all the gems and then...?

The average turnip farmer doesn't care. The PCs aren't buying his turnips anyway.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sure, you'd have to make gold into something like a dollar, probably, and change platinum to at least 20 gold, but you'd still end up with a lot of coins moving around.

Probably better to cut PC wealth down to something like 1/4 or 1/5, rather than in half. maybe even 1/10th, which is the same as converting gold to silver, which I know some folks already do.

Then you'd have multiple coins above your primary coin, but the potential issue there is then you only have 1 coin below it, not sure if that would be bad or not.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Do PCs actually break the economy now?

I mean, in actual practice. If the PCs roll into town with a wagon full of coin, they probably blow it all on magic items and consumables (if that is for sale), buy up all the gems and then...?

The average turnip farmer doesn't care. The PCs aren't buying his turnips anyway.

In "practice" the rational consequence gets handwaved. I'm not really interested, in this thread at least, in discussing whether that is good or bad. This thread is about how to fiddle with the money in the game to get a setup where less handwaving is required.

 

[Krachek]

A decent Kingdom may have 500 000 active commoners, 50 000 skilled workers.
2 silver a day for a commoner, 2 golds a day for a skilled one, say 300 day a year,
30 millions gold for the commoners, same for skilled,
60M a years.
it will take a lot of loot the break the economy!

 

[Steampunkette]

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Problem largely solved.

Most DMs don't really run stuff like upkeep or anything. Characters only spend money on food or drink while they're actively hanging out in a tavern and it makes money go a -long- way...

1 gold per player per day to stay in a Tavern, maintain their gear, and eat decent meals. With a 5-man band it's 5 gold a day.

Just make sure they're hanging around for more than a couple days at a time and you can take big bites out of their income. At -least- in the lower tiers.

Once they're taking out dragons on the regular, economics go out the window.

 

[DemoMonkey]

I'm just trying to understand what problem you are trying to solve; that seems to be the first step.

If you want to solve the problem of PC's "breaking the economy" you have to define what that means.

Prices doubling? Essential goods becoming scarcer? Less unemployment because they are hiring henchmen?

If none of these are broken, then there is nothing to fix.

So again: what does broken mean here, so that we can help?

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

A beggar on the street would need to make several GP per day.

What CR is a beggar, and what loot table would you roll on for their possessions?

 

[Asisreo]

So, lets assume for a moment that we are considering a world wherein the PCs are not exceptionally wealth until at least pretty high level, normally. Where PCs can't really break the economy simply by spending gold. (ignoring spells that could break the economy, for this thread)

What would be have to inflate the wages and prices in the core books to in order to get this sort of world, assuming either of these two;

1) Loot as per the DMG tables

2) Half as much loot as the DMG tables

I was going to say alot, but rethinking it, this question highly depends on the type and pacing of the campaign initially.

In a game paced where the time difference between tier 1 and tier 2 adventure is roughly 6 months or a whole year, the PCs can expect 7 rolls of the table for the start of this downtime. Or roughly 1,372gp worth of gold (7 rolls of the table: 2100*7/100 + 1050*7/10 + 70*7) with a certain amount of gems and art pieces. I'll raise the expected amount to a healthy 2,000gp.

Split amongst the 4 players, that's about 500gp to share for downtime, not counting extraneous expenses of gold. With this amount at this timespan, the players will be living either comfortable or wealthy lifestyles. Decent, but not economy breaking. Characters wishing to practice a profession will be able to hold onto this money but characters looking to train, recuperate, research, craft magic items, run a business, sell magic items, or sow rumors have to pay their gold and sometimes more.

Characters wishing to craft mundane items can basically do so for free but they do need to have half the gold worth of resources of what they're crafting. A spear in the woods may be free but plate armor in a city might require you paying anyways.

Now, if you pace for like a week between tier 1 to 2 as downtime, they'll be very wealthy comparatively and also get very strong very quickly.

So again, it depends on the campaign first and foremost.