The Economics of the D&D World

I try to keep the wealth that my players get to a minimal amount. Amazingly enough, they don’t really need 10,000 gold to tempt the party to partake in a mission. The fun of playing is enough. However, this is really something you have to start doing from the beginning. I also make magic items really hard to find in my world. You just can’t walk into a general store and buy a wand of cure light wounds. There’s about two cities in the world where magic items are sold, and neither of them are on the continent my players are on at the moment. And once they get there, they are going to find the items to be way over priced until they develop a relationship with the owners of these stores. I also make the treasure a lot more realistic and/or hidden. Unless someone casts detect magic, chances are they won’t notice that the torch they have found is an everburning torch. Or if they find a bag of dust, chances are they are going to think it is just a bag of dust unless someone gets clever and realizes it is dust of tracelessness. Then of course, there will be the obvious treasure like a strand of black pearls, which the party can share. The point is, you have to make them think a little bit. You can’t just say, “You find _________.” Force them to really get clever. Don’t make all of the treasure obvious. Make them do search checks. Come up with all sorts of treasures that they can find depending on how good of a search check they perform. Don’t say in a room, “Do a search check.” Instead, let the players realize that is something they can do. If they walk through a dungeon and don’t find anything just laugh a little and say, “You didn’t really look around though.”

I really don’t like it when DMs just give you numbers. For example, one party member asked me what the charisma of a commoner in a bar was. I said that she was rather attractive and charming. He said, “Give me a number!” And then I said, “She has a 14 stamped on her ass if you’re lucky enough to see it. All you see is that she’s charming and pretty.” From that point forward, he decided that it was best if he didn’t ask for numbers. I think that if there is a serious problem with the economics of the world, then it is the fault of the DM for being lazy.

***This is going to be a long post as I think “outloud”. I enocourage you to help here! Together maybe we can figure out DnD economics. Get a coffee first***

A thorny problem I am lookig into at the moment. Players are expected to have a certain degree of wealth in order to, well… survive adventuring.

I am sure everyone knows that sending a 20th level fighter into a dungeon with no equipment will almost certainly kill him – he probably packs an armour class of 11 and an unarmed strike that averages 1d6+5 non leathel damage and provokes attacks of oppotunity. Hell. A goblin or three might kil him.

Perhaps a way to work around all the extra gold is not to spend it, but destroy it. The DMG says that creating an item costs a huge pool of gold, but gives rather vague reasons for why. One is told -or assumes- that all of this goes in to buying material (a bit silly in my opinion) exacly how much material goes into a wand to make it worth that much? Suppose instead that the gold, melted in to its liquid state, is in fact the prime medium for enchanting any item. Literally, one uses the gold pieces themselves, melting them and drawing some kind of power from the material. The expended gold then becomes useless…sand maybe?
(Read the Burning City).

Economics in History
(Isn’t ment to be a actual study or anything, just a shot toward realism).

However, that doesn’t really solve the problem of characters turning up and selling huge items to poor towns. Actually, what really bugs me, and I think is very important in this entire question, is the price gap in lifestyles/earnings – maybe we can start there. Citizens earn 1sp per day I believe – that is just enough to keep them alive the DMG says, as long as they grow food etc on top. Most citizens would almost never SEE a gold piece. Let alone anything worth more. Even to assume that a single merchant in a small village has a few hundred gp sitting around is kind of strange (let alone any number of thousands). It is probably the life times savings for the entire people of the village…
How on earth does one man procure such money? Even if he taxed the people to the hilt he isn’t likley to gather so much capital (at least, not before being killed by a travelling Paladin for the crime!!).

Perhaps, one could raise the basic costs of things in the village to gp (and thus the earnings per day).
It isn’t really strange to assume a poor pesant class I believe. Interestingly, in the line of Economics, I read that a longbow used to cost around 3 weeks wages to the average man. Awesome! If DnD is acurate that means 21sp right?

Yeah right.

The PHB doesn’t seem to agree. In fact, it says 75gp. Thats what…35 times more? Earnings have to be around 3.5gp per day, I believe, in order to fit this rule ( ( 75/3 ) / 7 ). That assumes that one works 7 days a week mind you.

How much gp could the Economy hold?

How much can a player buy or sell? Well…how much does the economy of a large city hold in gp value?

What can we use for a measuring stick for an economy? Perhaps interesting is the topic of Slavery, although it may not be to the taste of your campaign, it can certainly be said to have been the backbone of many economies in the past.

I do not believe that slavery and medieval Europe really go together, but perhaps one could say that the existance of evil humanoids (etc) doesn’t make a slave economy unbelievable. It is likely that such societies hold very different views to our own on the topic – who see slavery as much more of a simple fact of life.

Also remember that it was not unheard of for slaves to be freed and go on to success. Also note that due to the value of slaves mal treatment isn’t exaclty intelligent. A Lawful Evil person is probably quite aware that treating his minions well will keep them alive (they represent resources of course!). As for Chaotic Evil? Well. Only the rich can afford it…

All that having been said, the position of serf and slave aren’t really that far removed if you ask me.

“it was estimated that an average wealthy Roman such as Nero owned 400 slaves in his town house alone, and according to one writer, some wealthy people owned from 10,000-20,000 slaves (Tingay and Badcock 128).”
(http://www.richeast.org/htwm/Greeks/Romans/slavery/slavery2.html)

Of course the price of slaves is certain to change alot with availibility…
Also note, if my history is correct, that Nero was an Emperor, not just a wealthy Roman, therein lies a wide gulf.

But how much did slaves cost?

“The price for a male slave in Rome at the time of Augustus has been quoted at 500 denarii. A female could go for as much as 6,000 denarii.”
(http://www.unrv.com/culture/roman-slavery.php)
“One slave trained in medicine was worth the price of 50 agricultural slaves.”
(http://www.crystalinks.com/romeslavery.html)

Ok. So how much would a slave be worth in a Dungeons and Dragons Economy? … Well. How much is a denarii to a gp?
As much faith as I put in Wiki (er…not much):
“I think a denarius was roughly equivalent to one days wages for normal work. I read somewhere else that it was about $20, but I think it is hard to calculate and also varies depending on the time period.”
(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_1_denarius_equal)

Well then lets say for the sake of debate that a denarii is a days wage – 3.5gp (35sp). That puts a slaves value at 1750gp (male worker?) and up to 21,000gp for an exceptional female ( kind of creepy but I didn’t make it up O ). However! We can’t seem to reconcile this with the price of the trained slave mentioned before – or can we? Technically, the one trained in medicine should fetch 87500gp…
Of course, at that price you may as well get an enchanted item that simply heals all problems I think (without pulling out the DMG and figuring out the cost of such an item). It may be worth cutting down the value of these slaves – perhaps 10,000gp and 20,000gp respectivley?

Note that the slave trained in medicine is basically a high level Expert and a source of cure(s) (for disease/poison/health damage and many other things) and quite possibly alchemy, knowledge (natural herbs), profession (cultivation). A source which lasts for his life span – 80 years lets say, not limited to a number of charges, but perhaps a number of charges per day )
Would you spend 20,000gp to have someone like that around your base? I would.

Lets not go into what makes the female worth 10,000gp…
I can just imagine that some kind of virgin female is worth more to the right kind of gastly evil Necromancer for some kind of creepy ritual!

One can easily say then, that members of races that live longer, or have certain abilities are worth more than the average slave. Elves with a considerably longer life span must fetch considerably more. Added to which, they are (supposed to be) trained in the use of weaponary.
Much like educated Greek slaves might have been?

Imagine the value of a Doppelganger sold on the black market to a power hungry faction? Huge I would guess?

Let us renew our attention to Economics – we could try this via silver pieces as per the normal DnD rules. Placing the male slave at 500sp, the female at 6000sp, doctor 25000sp.

Using these values some of the wealthy class would own around (at 15 000 slaves) 750,000gp worth of slaves (that is if they are all workers, this firgure is probably higher). These would, I assume, fill a variety of roles in a number of different estates owned by the …well, owner, I guess.

The 3.5gp Economy (1750gp per basic male slave) place this same number of slaves at 26,250,000gp. An astounding figure that makes magic items look like rather pathetic ornaments… **I’ll come to the believability of this in a minute**
Then again, is it unreasonable to assume that a wealthy family holds around 26 million gp worth of (slave) assets? I wouldn’t have thought so.
Actually, that is about right for what I would think of as “wealthy” in our world today.

A buyer of one of these wealthy families could certainly afford magic items listed in the DMG. Large numbers of them…

Ok. This wealth level presents more problems then it is worth huh? I mean, buying and outfitting an enitre army in the best magic items is now easy to anyone who is “wealthy”. Out of pocket change probably!

So we need our “wealthy” people to be, on average, poorer.

Prudent to find a new Economy valuation I think:
“No-one is sure how many slaves existed in the Roman Empire. Even after Rome has passed it days of greatness, it is thought that 25% of all people in Rome were slaves. A rich man might own as many as 500 slaves and an emperor usually had more than 20,000 at his disposal.”
(http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/roman_slaves.htm).

Only 500 slaves now? Well we might be on to something here.

Now, with the wage at 3.5gp, 500 days wages is 1750gp. Thus 500 slaves is at least 875,000gp worth (remember these people own land, and have spendable cash and probably art works/family heirlooms etc as well).
How does that sound? That means that a union of wealthy owners or a trade guild could easily trade in expensive magic items.

Remember that if there is an Emperor type figure he should net around (min of 35,000,000gp in slaves, then you add property & cash)…well. A it is a lot anyway.
In anycase, I dont really think one can use a figure like an Emperor in a setting akin to medieval Europe. I do not believe that a King had wealth comparable to an Emperor… in fact, if memory serves, King would depend on his circle of Nobles to fund him in times or war etc.

So how much might a wealthy family own in property?

So a wealthy family could net a min of 875,000gp worth of slaves. Obviously much more. Lets throw in a Mansion (DMG 3.5 pg 101) at 100,000gp (in the wealthy area of the city), a few grand houses (holiday houses in the country or farming estates both?) at 5000gp each.

Ok. Now we need a rough value of land for our wealthy classes slaves to work. (http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/rasmussen_land-spec-1.pdf)
Perhaps we should just assume that buildings (in the country especially) simply include the surrounding land, supposing the land is arable.
Obviously houses with good farmland are worth more?

Now we must face the question of how these 500 slaves are put to use – what we want to get an idea of how many of them are tilling the fields, and thus, how much land these owners are likely to hold.

Well. The Grand House (at 5000gp) has 4-10 rooms or so 3.5 DMG says (also page 101). The Mansion about 10-20 rooms.
(Way to be specific Cook, Williams and Tweet!).
Anyhow. Lets go for a higher number of rooms (these people buy the best I assume!) and say there might have been so many slaves per room, taking in to account that many will have multiple slaves (kitchen for example) and some almost none (storeroom).
With around two slaves per room we have around 40 ish in the Mansion (running affairs and looking after the owner and his family) and 10 in a Grand House (generally running affairs for the owners).

Suppose the Mansion is in the city and serves the purpose of the main home for the wealth family (close to politics & city culture etc). One might assume that Grand Houses lord over large farming estates, each contains the 10 prerequisite slaves to run affairs (probably a trusted slave family runs it for the owners?) and has…20 workers?
Hm… 30 people in 10 rooms… if they sleep in a dorm? Maybe out buildings…
Hard to say. Since it isn’t that important lets fudge a bit – 30 slaves per small property…
Makes
500 slaves = 50 x (number of Mansions) + 30 x (number of estates).
Nets them about 15 smaller estates worth of land, complete with multiple buildings. As to how many acres that is, I leave that to you.

Regardless, in slaves and land a wealthy familiy now nets 1,050,000gp in assets.

Using this system individual Characters enter ‘the wealthy’ at 22nd level (between 21st and 22nd I think). A party of four Characters becomes ‘wealthy’ just over 16th level.

To me, that sounds about right.

I do not think that one should raise the price of produce by a factor of 35 (3.5e PHB pg 112, table 7-3 “Trade Goods”) – it leads to absurdity I think. Perhaps a smaller factor, and add a larger base amount of these items to the average pesant. But that is not really much concern of ours I think. Perhaps a question for another day.