What's the value of D&D currency?

[Cbas10]

Something that irks me each time I ponder the prices is the relative value of D&D gold. Not in relation to modern currencies, mind you, but in itself. If I gather the price tables correctly, they're done after a "What can it do/What is the price" balance fashion. So I was wondering if the value of gold can be set after some more life-like necessities. And here's the question I would love to hear your opinon on: How much cash does a typical farmer in any given D&D world need to feed and clothe himself and his family (arbitrarily: one wife, 5 kids of various age, no helper on the farm)? I'd like to try and set this by the Equipment table one can find in the PHB (I'm working with 3.0, but I DO hope they didn't change that too much for 3.5 ). Any help is very appreciated.

I use the prices in the PHB, DMG, and other books only for one thing: calculating costs for crafting items (and for crafting time, DC of crafting rolls, etc). When regarding the regular purchase of mundane items, prices will always fluctuate, depending on any vast number of factors. This will "change" the value of gold quite a bit, comparing one geographical region to the next. Some prices in various books are quite absurd and exist only as game balance for characters collecting treasure during adventures, so I tend to take a much less detail-oriented approach on day-to-day costs. Instead, I assume that average commoner families make and consume between 1 and 3 gold pieces of wages and goods per month (depending on family size, this might be as high as 6 or 7).

 

[Hand of Evil]

Don't forget taxes.

Free farmer, serf, or slave? +10%, 0%, -10% of figures above.

 

[herald]

If you persist in trying to treat D&D item prices as a serious guide to in-game economic conditions, I will be forced to repost the example of the seven and a half billion chickens. And I do not want to repost the example of the seven and a half billion chickens. So don't do it, people!

Ok, now you've done it, tell me!

 

[herald]

I'm begining to think that the most powerful prestige class in all of D&D would be the economist.

It would have to be epic level, with powers to fully mastermind global markets. Possibly inter-dimentional ones as well.

 

[Altalazar]

Wow, this rut is getting very deep. Don't think so hard. Just downshift all currency as given - in the book, change all prices such that sp become cp, gp become sp, and cp become 1/10 cp. Make silver be the primary currency, and keep in mind that 99.99% of the population will go their whole lives never even seeing a gold piece and having no more than one or two small, battered, fragments of silver coins. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Hey, thanks

Lots of helpful answers here, especially CombatWombat
I was going that way, yeah, trying to calculate what would be needed to buy all the goods and food that are produced by Farmer John every year, which means no self-sufficience at all, for the example's sake, to calculate the worth of one year of farming work.

I'd differ a bit with your guess, allowing 6 poor and only 1 common meal per week, and maybe a bit difference in the clothes, but all together, I'd probably end up at 1 gp per day for everything, or an equivalent in value.

That's a great starting point, at least now I CAN tell my players in easily understandable terms what a gp IS worth compared to the rest of the world.

 

[Treebore]

First, our societal equivelant to D&D is in the 14th century our time, however the societal/economic structure is more like the late 17th and most of the 18th century.

This means that the surf system should be what is seen in D&D worlds, however we see a well established and large middle class in most D&D societies. So to have a more accurate refelection of the economy you may want to base your estimates on the cost of living in the 1800's.

This kind of info would be available through census type books available through the library and probably on-line somewhere.

Realize that in todays economies that the average income of a US citizen is approximately $24,000.00. In Russia it is under a $1,000.00/year. In the early 1960's in the USA the "average" car cost $1600.00. Horses sold for around $20 in the Civil War period, possibly/probably inflated by the war.

So, like mentioned by an earlier poster, you can get "away" with just about anything as long as your basis or foundation is consistantly built upon for the upper classes/nobility.


I, too, essentially switched to a silver based economy and kept the ten to one conversion for copper to silver to gold to platinum. However, realize that the adventurers who plunder the "wealthy" will quickly become extremely wealthy in comparison to the poor. Besides, once you start to seriously consider wealth in your campaign, you will have to redefine what "wealthy" is anyway. You will find that the standards put forth in the DMG will quickly go out the window.

Good luck on the maturation of your game.

 

[Epinephrine]

One other thing that may help is the upkeep variant proposed in the DMG (p.130 in the 3.5 DMG). It lists the self-sufficient upkeep price at 2 gp/month, which assumes you raise all your own food, make your own clothes, own your house/farm, and so forth. It also mentions that common laborers earn around 3 gp/month, which makes sense at around 1 sp/day.

On the other hand, by the book an average commoner with just one rank in a Craft or Profession skill, which are both class skills for them, can take 10 on his weekly checks and earn 5 gp/week, or about 7 sp/day. I know that skilled labor should earn more money than unskilled, but yeesh.

 

[Privateer]

I twitch in pain when a small village offers the PC's 150 gp to rescue the priest's daughter, or whatever. Why the hell do these people have all this useless gold sitting around? Anyway, I'm sure you're familiar with that rant.

They keep it around because it's useless except for when the priest's daughter gets kidnapped and they need to hire mercenary travellers to save her.

Or as an emergency fund if the farming's bad, or there's a cow-killing disease around and they need a cure or more cows. A town without a backup plan for disaster might not be a town for very long.

 

[Arkhandus]

Well, using the Player's Handbook, a typical 4th-level middle-aged human farmer with 7 ranks of Profession (farmer), and 9 Wisdom (average for a human peasant is 8, +1 for middle-age), typically earns 8 gold pieces a week by practicing their trade (average roll of 10 +7 ranks -1 Wisdom = 16 /2 =8). 8 gold pieces multiplied by 52 weeks is 416 gold pieces.
Then, considering that the wife and 5 kids help out some on the farm, counting as untrained labor... 6 silver pieces per week, multiplied by 52 weeks = 31 gp + 2 sp per year.... Total of 447 gp and 2 sp per year, and another 250-some gp per year if the wife has a rank or two of Profession (farmer), which is likely. So it seems likely the farmer's family could afford to get by, likely earning enough extra to pay their taxes, but not likely to afford anything else. Of course, the farmer's family would only be making money at harvest time, but some of that money would actually be unearned, as the farmers supply themselves with plenty of food and a few other necessities, and would trade some of their food for new clothes and to pay for repairs and the like. Seems that CombatWombat's estimations for yearly living expenses of a D&D farmer seem like a fair approximation.