| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Cards77 |
Posted - 15 Jun 2015 : 03:21:33
I did search for this topic. Hard to believe I couldn't find anything.
Are there any writings or has Ed or other Sages talked at all about how much it costs to maintain a certain standard of living in the Realms?
My group is moving to Waterdeep for the winter. I am looking for ways to simplify the cost of living for my PCs.
We normally spend LOTS of time in inns and taverns roleplaying, with me detailing the food and drinks and atmosphere, including the prices. I'm fine with detailing the payments for each meal and drink.
Every place is different, and the prices reflect that.
However, with a much larger city and a group that is likely to be spread out in differing lodgings and the fact that I'll likely gloss over what we do for tendays at a time, I'm looking for a simple "cost of living" concept that I can charge the PCs by day, tenday or month.
Like a "poor" lifestyle per month would be xx gold (or less).
I'm a little confused and I know that the rules in general for all editions deal poorly with economics.
I have this impression that poor folk aren't likely to see more than a handful of gold in their entire lives, yet my PCs are regularly looting hundreds of gold from EL 4-7 encounters.
Yet, many "Society" rules and other DMs have like 6 GP/month or more for a "poor" lifestyle. This seems very high for a poor or common person. Seems to me that a non-adventurer or "poor working" person would deal more in coppers and silvers.
Has anyone ever looked at just how the "normal" person in the Realms lives in a large city, and just how much it costs?
This would help me somewhat to put into perspective exactly what I'm doing in my game.
What rules have you used in your games that you felt worked well? |
| 17 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| SaMoCon |
Posted - 18 Jun 2015 : 12:12:01
Yup, that's why I usually convert nearly all coinage found on the bad guys into trade goods, food, and tools unless there's a logical reason for the coinage to be coins like successful highway bandits who've shaken down merchant caravans recently or soldiers of an international organization moving funds between a satellite location and headquarters. Raiders raid to steal what they need and return home to enjoy their plunder. If the home society is a civilization in its own right with a working economy then grabbing works of art, coins, and jewels would make sense. If not then grabbing equipment of recognizable advanced technology (steel weapons, metal armors, loomed cloth, refined tools, finished fur/leather products), supplies of foodstuffs, domesticated animals, captured people to serve as slaves, and means to port the loot back home would be the priority.
I did way too much research for my games on basic technologies but that understanding let me know what it takes to take absolutely useless ore and turn some of that into a useful metal while the rest of it becomes absolutely useless slag. It is amazing that people figured out how to do that. Couple that with the knowledge of what materials are necessary for even the most basic bloomery to function and what is necessary to support the people refining ore into metal for the entire time that they are not otherwise growing crops or foraging food and you start getting the idea of how intricate and involved even a primitive economy has to be to create an infrastructure beyond hunter/gatherers. We take leather for granted yet that has a massive process behind its creation. Blacksmithing requires heat beyond what wood fires can generate to make iron workable.. Mining requires tools harder than the substance being dug, supports to keep the disturbed ground from collapsing into the tunnels, constant refreshing of air, means to truck payloads of dug earth & rock out of the tunnels, and a means to see that won't ignite flammable pockets of gas (even with our modern technologies miners are still dying to collapses, suffocation/drowning(!), and explosions). And all of these activities are possible due to an abundance of food and the gathering of resources for rope, fuel, rawhide, and other materials to support the others... and that is just to make a decent suit of scale armor! |
| Cards77 |
Posted - 18 Jun 2015 : 01:43:05
Yeah you've got a really valid point. Especially now that I'm getting into EL 7ish encounters, I'm like "damn where did this hill giant get all this money??!!".
If nothing else it forces me to get very creative when players start asking questions. |
| SaMoCon |
Posted - 17 Jun 2015 : 13:09:11
If the PCs start spending money in excess of the settlement's commerce then the locality will experience a rapid "boom town" economy phenomena of rising prices and attracting travelers eager to grab a share of that increased pool of coinage. If there are not enough products produced or circulating in the settlement to maintain the increased activity when the PCs stop spending the money then there will be a crash with flight by non-local as the economy adjusts with a recovery period to normalcy which I typically adjudicate to be equal in duration to the boom economy depending on how much damage there is to the prior native commerce. It's always funny watching the idea dawn on a player that money and wealth are not the same thing when the price goes up as goods become more scarce but that is just supply and demand economics. But I digress...
If you want things to make sense then stop looking at the coins because those are just the catalyst for the economy - not the medium. All an economy is doing is deciding who gets what resources and why. What are the valued resources of Waterdeep? Shelter, security, patronage, services, employment, education, finished goods, knowledge, social status, land ownership, & political influence. Everything else comes from outside Waterdeep. Most everyone is vying for these things in competition with the others except the dregs of society who don't give a damn about anything and don't care beyond getting their next meal or their next fix. Go through each of those items and figure what it takes for a person to secure them in varying degrees of quality and duration. From top to bottom of society, everyone has some aspiration on Waterdeep's resources to strive for those as goals or as stepping stones in longer term plans.
As for buying a house in Waterdeep... Let's take a brief aside into the real world. In Los Angeles, there were 2200 homes sold with a median price of $625000 (that's median, not average, which means 50% cost more and 50% cost less). Rhetorical question, were there 2200 people just looking around to purchase a new home with a median of $625000 in their pocket or even a net worth of that amount? Just as a reminder, Ed Greenwood, who is the creator of the Forgotten Realms, wrote his first Forgotten Realms story about Mirt the Moneylender. Banking, coin mongering, and money lending all means loaning other people money for profit or collateral. Merchants, ship captains, landlords, even nobles have creditors that allowed them to make those big ticket purchases with which they plan to payoff with the windfall of their ventures or the profits of their sales.
Even those whom cannot secure loans still have means to purchase above their monetary means. Haggling doesn't just exist but is also common practice and thus what people do everyday to make ends meet. There are other means to acquire what one wants that don't have anything to do with coins. "Sweat Equity" is a fancy way of saying that the work put into making a thing will cover any actual money that would have gone into its purchase (i.e., making a cabinet out of some boards in lieu of buying a completed cabinet). Trading favors, doing work, mingling with the right people, begging for charity, and other things that I haven't thought of (but players invariably will) can and will be used by NPCs to work an economy in their favor. Once you have all these things down then how NPCs interact in the background will be a piece of cake.
In my games, I have treated the economy as being a variable slide for the NPCs based on what they can afford to offer while the PCs are treated as if they were suckers requiring skill rolls, role-play, and stuff from the previous paragraph to alter the higher prices they would otherwise have to pay as compared to "Joe." Except for my current game because it is set in a still being settled farming town in the middle of nowhere in the Backlands of the Western Heartlands. The PCs could find thousands of gold coins and it would mean nothing because there is no trade, no commerce, and the only known civilization nearby are savage Gur nomads, a wayward clan of Uthgardti barbarians, hostile goblin tribes, and groups of beastial ogres - all intelligent beings fighting over wood, food, shelter, & dominance of the land that has these resources while gold just doesn't matter to any of them. I never understood why monsters and monstrous humanoids always carried around coins when it was obvious they were not able to buy anything but I digress again... |
| Kentinal |
Posted - 17 Jun 2015 : 02:25:02
Cards, successful PCs are the top one percent. They earm money and spend money far more then the day laborer.
I did work out a calculation using the SRD of how to Tax and pay for a standing army. I did throw in some assumptions because such were required. I established a base tax rate at 20 percent, the church getting the tithe of 5 percent on top of that.
Those numbers resulted in a calculation of troops of the Guard being paid 8 gold a week and Watch being paid 11 gold per week (The reason Watch got paid more is they had to pay for food and shelter, as they did not receive that as benefit of living on a Guard base where food and shelter was provided). That results in base pay to live as 3 gold per week. My army of course was and is supported by many farmers with good growing conditions, considering historical reports. Basically the result of taxing food production and business the realm was able to feed its people and animals so that every one lived. I never dealt with the individual wages of the 70,000 people of the realm. I did however infer that the religions out of their tithes would provide food to the needy. With a good crop yield the realm exports a few tons, a poor crop not so good *shrugs*. I never figured in Guard successes in raids or other conflicts because that was harder then crop yields could be estimated. Those were based on events in play in any event and could not be budgeted for in any real way.
So after all my natter I do offer the idea that indeed one employed can live in a city for about 4 silver a day. The others (unskilled) likely would be going to temples for food, picking pockets (if they can pull it or others crimes off), begging and/or working as a day worker.
There will never be a prefect answer however clearly some temples clearly will offer food to the needy, of course hoping to increase the faith thus the influence of the faith. No model is prefect and orphans and children's fund could exist, that might even help them.
Edit: Saw two typos after I clicked send, hopefully corrected now. |
| Cards77 |
Posted - 17 Jun 2015 : 01:36:29
Wow, that's splitting some hairs to say the least. I handle the "how things work" in my game. I'm just looking for opinions of what has worked in YOUR game in terms of wealth, relative to the greater world around the PC. I realize the RULES are set up to only really address the PCs, but what's lacking is how do these rules relate the PCs to the greater world?
What we're fighting against is the rules especially regarding wealth seem to increasingly treat the PCs as if they exist in a vacuum. When in fact a well played world is exactly the opposite. They may be the top 1% of wealthy individuals but it's essential that the system retain some measure of relate-ability.
yes the SRD commodity prices seemed to come from nothing that makes sense anyway.
It's not an easy answer but it's essential, as a somewhat functioning economic system adds to the realism of the world. Especially when players really start thinking about what to do with their wealth. It doesn't have to be perfect and/or perfectly detailed, it just needs to make sense in the context of the world.
Details of profression vs non-profession, tenant and rentals, it's all tangental to the primary questions. |
| SaMoCon |
Posted - 16 Jun 2015 : 11:32:49
quote:
Originally posted by Kentinal
SaMoCon Professions, Teamsters...
Woah! Modern teamsters are NOTHING like medieval up to industrial age teamsters. The old teamsters were real skilled individuals prized for the ability to control and care for teams of 2-10 or more draft animals. These are not the guys that load and unload drays or command a solitary nag - look to draymen and coach drivers for such banality. Now tractor trailer drivers are the modern equivalent to old teamsters but the intricacy and mastery of skill sets required is far and away more demanding of the teamster than the truck driver; however, that ease of training is one of many reasons why truck drivers have supplanted teamsters in the modern world. I know you didn't mean it like that, but the definition and meaning of these words had to be set straight before someone else got the wrong idea about this highly skilled job. These guys are not typical haulers, freight lifters, cargo carriers, and other assorted people that lug heavy things.
quote:
Street Sweepers (likely government employees or by local law residents required to do, in later case government code enforcement officer to assess fines), Sewers the same as street cleaners, trash collection generally does not appear much of an issue (The very poor and or rats will take care of that) and so on. Most of the things you consider unskilled (above that I replied to at least) are professions.
Professions..? Please, I am not trying to talk down to you, just consider this counter argument. Profession skills have a set meaning in 3rd Ed. The use of a profession skill for a 1st level character trained in that skill nets 1 gold coin per day (formula (1d20 (10) + profession ranks (4) + wis modifier (0) + misc modifiers (0))/2 = 7 gold coins per 7 day week). Granting the above unskilled jobs that status of "profession" means that garbage pickers, street sweepers, and the like earn 360 gold coins per year. Since there is no actual product, from where do all these gold coins come? And it is no different than the income from blacksmithing, inn keeping, tanning, doctoring, or farming - all of which require hard work, careful preparation, managing underlings, tracking inventory, and dealing with customers. The latter has actual customers and commerce that the D&D system simulates with its abstract system. Those earlier mentioned jobs are like chimney sweepers, they may have fancy titles but they are still unskilled jobs that anybody can do with a little bit of instruction and a handful of coppers for motivation.
quote:
Clearly some NPCs might not have the Wisdom or Intelligence to have many skill points and some might select swimming and climbing instead of something that can earn money, it is unlikely that few would plan to be unskilled labor so they can swim and climb well (3rd Edition).
Take a look around you, sometime. Look at the people working in grocery markets stocking shelves, at the juice bars & coffee houses serving up beverages, in the sandwich shops, at the gas stations, in the convenience marts like 7-11, behind the register at fast food restaurants, driving cabs/ubers, working kiosks in malls, working tourist traps, and on, and on, and on... Our modern world with education forced onto us by our upbringing has not stopped people from choosing to be the bottom rung of professional development and staying there. Every bar, every night club, every dance hall is filled with people who do nothing to achieve greater because doing so interferes with their pleasure seeking ways. How are the people of the realms different other than lacking that initial press of education and having a general ignorance of the worldly knowledge in sciences & philosophies? The average local is going to be spending skill points in Knowledge: Local (Waterdeep) to know who is important to him and why there is importance to recent nearby events or the names of the local landmarks (its hard to be a local if one doesn't know where to go, how to get there, who to talk to, what is actually there, and why things are done that way). That leaves precious few skill points left for important skills like Diplomacy to be properly obsequious to one's superiors, Bluff to lie oneself out of confrontations, Sense Motive to know when someone is trying to put one over on oneself, Spot to see trouble coming, Listen to hear when trouble is coming, and Handle Animal to make sure the nice doggy doesn't bite.
quote:
I certainly can not answer how well guilds control Waterdeep to prevent independents to compete,, however Waterdeep has been promoted as a trading city. Thus it strikes be as unlikely that the guilds would prevent other tradesman from working in the city. I seem to recall that Waterdeep population during winter was about 100,000 and rose to as much as 1,000,000 at peek of trading season.
The power of the guilds is a gray area. While the source material says that the Lords prevent the guilds from directly stifling competition, all named & detailed establishments are linked to their respective guilds. No black & white details means we have to infer things that may or may not be true. I have reasoned that since guilds require dues then being part of one is more costly than being a non-guild merchant which should give such unaffiliated businesses an advantage in pricing that would wipe out the guilds in no time at all. So how would guilds, that historically came about to establish price controls and pooled resources for the mutual benefit of all, be able to stand versus the unfettered non-guild businesses? The gray area is what is mentioned about merchants' guilds on the Forgotten Realms wiki about members getting benefits like protection from criminal activity and government taxation. If the Lords are not siding with the guilds then there is only one thing left to explain why the prominent shops include no freelancer businesses of which I know despite the pure business factor being in favor of the unguilded.
quote:
Living outside the city for the unskilled indeed a problem, however sleeping in the streets should be less of a problem as long as the watch does not mind. Actually it is likely a craftsman wanting a day worker for more then one day would let them sleep in shed and give them some food.
That would be an agreement between a landlord and his tenant. I wholly accept this argument as being a valid modifier to the living experience in Waterdeep so long as the caveats are understood. This arrangement is one of trust between proprietor and worker, the issues of workspace may preclude such an arrangement, and the expectations arising from such an arrangement may present their own complications.
Sorry, Cards77, but I seem to be muddying the water instead of making things clearer. Just how detailed do you need to be for your players or for yourself to be comfortable running this scenario for your players? |
| Kentinal |
Posted - 16 Jun 2015 : 02:58:42
SaMoCon Professions, Teamsters (moving freight, oh they might hire a day worker [The one silver a day]); Street Sweepers (likely government employees or by local law residents required to do, in later case government code enforcement officer to assess fines), Sewers the same as street cleaners, trash collection generally does not appear much of an issue (The very poor and or rats will take care of that) and so on. Most of the things you consider unskilled (above that I replied to at least) are professions. Clearly some NPCs might not have the Wisdom or Intelligence to have many skill points and some might select swimming and climbing instead of something that can earn money, it is unlikely that few would plan to be unskilled labor so they can swim and climb well (3rd Edition).
I certainly can not answer how well guilds control Waterdeep to prevent independents to compete,, however Waterdeep has been promoted as a trading city. Thus it strikes be as unlikely that the guilds would prevent other tradesman from working in the city. I seem to recall that Waterdeep population during winter was about 100,000 and rose to as much as 1,000,000 at peek of trading season.
Living outside the city for the unskilled indeed a problem, however sleeping in the streets should be less of a problem as long as the watch does not mind. Actually it is likely a craftsman wanting a day worker for more then one day would let them sleep in shed and give them some food. |
| SaMoCon |
Posted - 16 Jun 2015 : 02:34:24
Well, Kentinal, that would be unlikely that almost everyone would have craft or profession skills because then who would load freight, haul rigging, sweep streets, muck sewers, pick through garbage, carry water, and most everything else that would have to be done in a large city without mechanization, electricity, refrigeration, water pumps, and all the other conveniences needed to be performed but requiring labor without any real skill (the everyone-needs-a-college-degree fallacy crashes and burns in the face of reality). There is also the requirement of being taught those skills since almost all require insights that can only come from experience and the tools to apply them when learning (schooling costs money and there are only a few available openings for apprentices with legacies (the masters' progeny) having priority). Then you have the matter of the tight control by the guilds to limit competition in the trades & crafts (yes, there are independent crafters but they don't do well for some strange reason), which really does lock people out of that avenue of upwards mobility. Most of the people are working stiffs.
2nd Ed might have different pricing than what I dug up from my 3rd Ed sources. It has been a long time since I played a game in 2nd Ed Waterdeep. The 3rd Ed makes it clear that lodging and food is no more expensive than the average for the world (I guess, to reflect the abundance brought by a city designed to be conducive to trade and the largess of that trade creating a surplus of food to be consumed or sold). If you have suggested pricing that is non-canon, would you go into deeper detail as to why it should be different other than as a tax on affluent characters with retroactively assigned reasoning (i.e., the inflation was going to exist prior to the event of players' characters having money)?
As for living outside the city... woof, imagine that walking commute from outside the walls, through the gates when they open in the morning, getting scrutinized by the guards, then doing your workday before having to trudge back through that mess before the gates close for the night? The land near the city is not open ground. Like any city of tens of thousands in the medieval period, the settlement is surrounded by farmlands that provide the food necessary to support that many people. Any lodging outside the city on those major roads would not offer less in rates because they do not have to compete with inside the city when the gates close prior to late comers gaining access to to Waterdeep. |
| Kentinal |
Posted - 16 Jun 2015 : 02:31:36
Cards, BD&D did offer something considering realm ownership. It is old however might serve at least some of what you seek for any holding a fief or building an army.
I still however stay with D&D never handled economics for the blacksmith or the farmer well and likely never will. The game does, as you note, revolve about the PCs. The NPCs in the background live as well or poorly as the DM or source material offers.
In some ways the SRD made it even worst in saying a pound of wheat was a commodity that was worth one copper on the farm and the same price in the city. |
| Cards77 |
Posted - 16 Jun 2015 : 02:18:39
quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy Grenemyer
Cards your question reminds of Shadowrun and its simplified system for adjudicating living costs: Luxury, High, Middle, Low, Squatter, or Streets.
I think it'd be cool if Steven Schend weighed in on what category names and costs he'd associate with a place like Waterdeep in the mid-1300's.
As a SR player myself it does indeed remind me of "purchasing" a lifestyle at character creation.
I think the SRD rules do a very poor job of explaining it and while some people here obviously think a "normal" person or "normal" economics doesn't play into the game, I think differently.
You have to understand the economics to be able to suspend the players disbelief as one person put it, and give them a perspective of just exactly HOW rich they are.
You may think you're rich with your few thousand or even 10,000 gold pieces, but try purchasing a house or business in Waterdeep.
Or as one of my players is learning, try owning your own castle/tower and financing all the people to run it, all the supplies, etc.
But in a macro view it helps the players understand. Yes they are rich. They are fabulously wealthy, and they have thousands of gold pieces, because they take risks no one else is willing or able to take, and they reap the rewards of that.
Being able to speak to that in simple and believable terms is important, at least for my game. Players then have a great appreciation for how special they are and how spectacular their rewards are in comparison to the world around them, and yet still cannot rival the wealth of a successful business enterprise.
These things may seem trivial to some, but are important to make the world feel lived in, and therefore real.
|
| Kentinal |
Posted - 15 Jun 2015 : 22:08:57
One thing not considered yet, actually a few.
If cost of living is high in Waterdeep, untrained day workers would likely need to be offered more then one silver a day, they would seek work outside the city where living costs would be lower.
Almost every character most likely will have at least one skill point in Craft or Profession and as such seek income that way. The weekly pay would go up to an average of about 6 gold per week, they would only work untrained (out of known craft or profession for short periods of time).
I will of course mention that the prices in the SRD or most PHBs (Have not read most recent) are not balanced well and can not represent or translate into an actually working economy. |
| Jeremy Grenemyer |
Posted - 15 Jun 2015 : 21:24:05
Cards your question reminds of Shadowrun and its simplified system for adjudicating living costs: Luxury, High, Middle, Low, Squatter, or Streets.
I think it'd be cool if Steven Schend weighed in on what category names and costs he'd associate with a place like Waterdeep in the mid-1300's. |
| Mapolq |
Posted - 15 Jun 2015 : 20:34:51
I think I posted the quote first, and then edited the post some 15 minutes later. But as for my actual post, I'd say I went on a tangent and addressed the seeming contradiction between "earning 6 gp a month" and "not ever dealing in gold pieces" which seemed to be expressed in his post I quoted. And added a comment on the wealth scale.
Like I said, I felt the larger question about cost of living had been addressed by you and Saxmilian.
|
| SaMoCon |
Posted - 15 Jun 2015 : 20:20:00
Mapolq, were you going to say something more or did you just like what Cards77 had written there so much that you reposted it again?
Yes, a "poor lifestyle" is expensive, more so than what poor people can typically afford. Look at what is being bought. The rental of a place to stay paid for by the day, meals prepared and served to the customer, and drink served in vessels. The service, the preparation, the use of other peoples' stuff (dishes, buildings, furniture), and the "on demand" requirement to need these things when you want them are all factors in making these things more expensive which is why people living in those areas cut out the middlemen, attempt to own, or do without. Try doing that in your home town and see how much that costs when comparing it to what passes for poor people and their income. Find the most run down section of your settlement and price a motel room, check the menu of the dirtiest diner/cheapest fast food restaurant, and look up the costs in that sketchy dive of a bar.
Those costs are why people buy their own homes or enter into long term leases for shelter, shop for their own ingredients to make meals, purchase or create their own furniture, and slowly expand their own possessions of creature comforts & wealth. From the poor to the rich, this is what people do to cut out the unnecessary and expensive costs of renting services on the spot in the areas they live. In case anyone needs this spelled out - the prices in the book are travel expenses for transient people whom have no home, no roots, and no intentions of sticking around.
You want to figure out what a poor lifestyle cost is for the working joe? Yeah, D&D doesn't have anything to cover how to live as a peasant farmer which might be why it is called "Dungeons & Dragons" instead of "Pitchforks & Plowshares." In this case, though, we must make stuff up and try to mesh it with what we already know to make enough sense to suspend our players' disbelief. An unskilled laborer (Joe) pulls in 30 silvers per month by the System Reference Document (SRD). Renting a place, Joe haggles with a landlord for 5 silvers per month (totally made up) or pays that in bribes for a lean-to shanty. Joe buys bread by the loaf, cheese by the ounce, and vegetables by the pound to sustain himself on roughly 3-4 coppers (SRD) per day which is roughly 10 silvers per month. Dropping into the pub twice per tenday to barely qualify as "a local" for a mug of ale and to keep up with the news & goings-on of the community runs another 2 silver & 4 copper (SRD); however, odds are that Joe is in the pub every night as a regular with a group of friends for a monthly cost of 12 silvers. That means anywhere from 17.4 silvers to 27 silvers per month with 3-12.6 silvers left over for clothes, bathing, shoes, shave & a haircut (2 bits!), tools, accessories, services, and savings towards a larger purchase. As long as Joe doesn't have to groom himself, need medical services for injury or sickness, wash/mend his clothes, have his haircut, need tools or implements of any kind, replace his shoes, eat better meals, or pay for diversions then he should have anywhere from 3 to 15 gold of various coins in his purse by the time a year is out. Yeah, I think Joe spent that money, too, but this was just an example of the kind of thinking that has to go into the lifestyle costs of the NPCs in a setting. |
| Mapolq |
Posted - 15 Jun 2015 : 18:29:01
quote:
Originally posted by Cards77
Yet, many "Society" rules and other DMs have like 6 GP/month or more for a "poor" lifestyle. This seems very high for a poor or common person. Seems to me that a non-adventurer or "poor working" person would deal more in coppers and silvers.
I think the original questions were answered better than I could, but let me just point out the quoted paragraph presents no contradiction.
A person earning 6 gold coins a month probably won't get that amount in actual gold coins. In fact, some might not see a single coin at all (lots of farmers deal only in produce and barter, though I assume most will use coppers fairly often). Artisans will sell dozens of items, each for a few coppers, or maybe a silver. Thus they don't see gold coins in their daily lives. Even for those with salaries, they will be often paid per tenday, in silvers, and not monthly in gold, I imagine.
And the reason why people can find hundreds of gold someplace is, well, because rich people are a lot richer than poor people. The economy there might be a bit off, but not by that much. Imagine those 6 gold coins were 600 dollars. Then 1,000 gold is 100,000 dollars. A lot, but not inordinarily so for richer people. 1,000,000 gold, which is a sum most large governments in the Realms would deal with, would be 100,000,000 dollars. Again, not exhorbitant considering the scale.
Of course, the simple correlation isn't at all realistic, but it gives a basic idea of what scale is believable and what is not. And my opinion is that the D&D gold piece scale is at least somewhat believable. |
| Saxmilian |
Posted - 15 Jun 2015 : 14:43:11
Here's how i reasoned some of it, if it helps.
Poorest of the Poor (36 gold a Year)
The cheapest living would be 1 gold for a room, some barren room in a warehouse perhaps 4.5 gold in cheap meals and no entertainment. Even this boils to 4.5 gold a month.
A laborer makes 1 Silver a day (3 gold a month) this cuts the meals to less than half so perhaps skipping breakfast or lunch every other day and drinking water rather than an ale except for dinner. Nearly all money is spent on just survival none on savings.
Cheap Living (120 gold Year)
Cheap living in the city boils down to the average need for 10 gold a month (or 3 Silvers a day).
Rooms rent for 1-4 gold a month for a cheap room, this is generally an apartment above a local shop with a stairway entrance, window, small bed, chamber pot and perhaps an old table and chair and a few candles a week for lighting.
Cheap meals cost 5 Copper (4 gold 5 Silver a month) for three squares a day. The common laborer most likely eats few-day old breads, stews and pickled fish and meats.
Cheap entertainment is 5 coppers and lets assume that the average worker wants to do something fun at least once a Tenday, this adds another (15 coppers) to their monthly totals.
At 10 gold a month this leaves 4 Silver and 5 Coppers for saving and future purchases per month. This allows for a Cheap drinking night on the town (4 Silvers), perhaps a three-silver whore or saving away for that new shiny dagger (which would take nearly 5 months). The average miserly Cheap-person would save 5 gold 4 Silvers a year in personal Savings.
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| SaMoCon |
Posted - 15 Jun 2015 : 11:19:19
City of Splendors (3rd Ed) has food & lodging at 100% of the Players Handbook pricing while drinks are at 150%. The SRD puts a poor lifestyle as 4 silvers & 4 coppers per day (poor inn lodging, poor daily meals, & 2 mugs of ale) with the markups. Expensive for a visiting poor person which is largely why the poor do not travel. Common lifestyle is 1 gold & 1 silver per day (common inn lodging, common daily meals, & 1 pitcher of ale or common wine). Good living is 17 gold & 5 silver per day (good inn lodging, good daily meals, & 1 bottle fine wine).
With the above information I impose a kind ruling that what the PCs pay for is how they are perceived. A poor lifestyle is an unrecognized individual of the unwashed masses who gets hassled by the police, is unwanted amongst the nicer sections of town, is shooed out of shops, and will not be entertained by any individual with whom the PCs do not have some prior personal connection; however, they can interact with low-lifes, transients, criminals, ne'er-do-wells, sailors, traveling peddlers of questionable goods, pilgrims, refugees, outcasts, and bums. A common lifestyle nets the recognition of decent & upstanding citizens with acceptance into the neighborhoods of work-a-day people, craftsmen, & merchants; although, the world of the elites and their social functions are out of reach and one should not expect to be waited upon or given service when entering establishments reserved for the rich which means no magic shops, no temple services, no schools, no horse traders, no commodity goods brokers, no jewelers, no city government officials, and no leaders of any kind will interact with the PCs. A good lifestyle opens all the doors that can be reached without requiring rolls versus skills, attributes, and/or abilities because the PCs will be taken seriously as people of means by all walks of life.
The lifestyle paid for includes some hob-nobbing as the characters interact with others in their station "off camera" that helps sell their image. Appropriate clothes, bathing, and converting their coins to the local currency are all "must do" actions for the effects to transpire.
You can also give Pathfinder's Lodging & Services a look for more ideas and generally better descriptions than what the SRD offers. |
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