Post/Author/DateTime	Post
LaoKhanWei 10-22-05, 04:08 AM	This more of a general problem with D&D than it is a specifically Eberron problem, though I'd rather post it here =) Is it just me, or is there no way an NPC could survive on their daily pay based on the DMG chart? It lists a craftsman (A skilled worker, middle class) as making 3 sp/day. A quick look at common item costs lists a common meal at 3 sp per day. It seems a middle class commoner should be eating common meals, but even poor meals cost 1 sp, so he'd spent all his money for that day on food. Then he has to cover lodging, clothing, and any other items he might need for survival, and this is just survival. What if he has children? How does he pay for them? Sure, life might be tough but I think we can assume at least a somewhat reasonable standard of living for a craftsman. The poorest of the poor could barely survive on these wages!
LaoKhanWei 10-22-05, 04:12 AM	Oh yeah, and cooks make less in a day than it costs for one of their meals! Am I missing something here?
Fordel 10-22-05, 04:59 AM	Almost all prices listed in sourcebooks are balanced around PC's not the NPC commoners. With that said, most common workers don't eat out every day, not even at a low scale 'fastfood' joint. The lunchbox (or sack) is a wonderous storage container for all kinds of foodstuffs prepared at home ;) Like someone working for minimum wage with rent/loan payments due isn't going to get to eat out every day, not even from the hotdog vendor. Just can't afford it. Significantly more economical to make yourself a sandwhich at home and take it with you.
Errant 10-22-05, 05:01 AM	I generally use listed pay rates as a base line if at all. IMC, as a rule of thumb, level 1 NPCs are apprentices or raw/barely trained recruits, L2's are journeymen/regulars, L3 tradesman/veterans, L4 masters/career veterans, and so on. I multiply the base line by the NPC level to get their actual wages. Doesn't work all the time, but to me it makes more sense than having craftsmen who have been working their trade for years still being only 1st level. Also, at lower levels you can factor in a bunch of bartering. Assume jobs basically come with food and/or lodging supplied and earning less than the cost of a meal for a day's work isn't so dramatic. It would be nice if there was a logical economy underpinning prices for everything in DnD but I don't think it'll ever happen.
polt 10-22-05, 06:00 AM	I don't see why the big deal is. Unless you plan on calculating the economics of every single NPC you use.
LuciferNietzsche 10-22-05, 06:53 AM	It's probably just a matter of realism, Polt, though I suppose there are plenty who have some sort of plans that require a little better economy laid out. No, commoners shouldn't be eating out every night, and if they're married with a family, they actually shouldn't be eating out at all really. In a society like that of any D&D world, only travellers and bachelors really eat at inns and such as far as commoners are concerned. The wealthy don't eat out often either, having personal chefs and such, but they do go out. As for the comment about minimum wage...even minimum wage isn't enough to really live off of. It wouldn't be a big deal, except that we're supposed to be an advanced culture, and yet we still have a few who hoard wealth and resources for themselves at the expense of the many. So, things do need to be tweaked a little, in both D&D and the real world. But in D&D, it's not actually important as it is in the real world.
Bluebrush 10-22-05, 07:41 AM	Significantly more economical to make yourself a sandwhich at home and take it with you. I wonder if there was a Montagu ir'Sandwich. Or maybe it was Butty d'Ghallandra.
Streamweaver 10-22-05, 10:09 AM	This more of a general problem with D&D than it is a specifically Eberron problem, though I'd rather post it here =) Is it just me, or is there no way an NPC could survive on their daily pay based on the DMG chart? Well one of the problems with DnD in general is everything is designed from the ponit of view of the adventurer and the encounter. Still though craftsmen could survive, those costs are usually for an meal at an Inn if I recall. They would be spending cp a day on food items like bread and cheese and eating them at home. So they could survive but the cost of a meal at an Inn would be days wages. Again this is a DnD problem IMO. Players exist in the world but in an entirly different reality. This happens both on a money level and in terms of Hitpoints. Money is easier to overloook because even in our own world there are people who live in a entirly different financial reality than others of us. Heck those of us in the industrial world live in a whole different reality than those not in it. Hitpoints however.... well when you can take a quick dip in lava for fun it's more difficult to conceptualize.
jknevitt 10-22-05, 11:46 AM	I wonder if there was a Montagu ir'Sandwich. Or maybe it was Butty d'Ghallandra. Well the 'Hero' was named after heroes (ie the PCs) because they could a) afford and b) manage to eat a sandwich that big.
Inkling 10-22-05, 03:33 PM	Oh yeah, and cooks make less in a day than it costs for one of their meals! Am I missing something here?Sure, poor people shouldn't go out to eat! They have to make dinner themselves at home. But I agree, the costs of stuff in D&D definitely should have had more thought in it. I mean what's with the crowbar costing 2gp? Crowbars are so easy to make we were making them in first year shop class in junior high school and the material costs are miniscule. If I was a blacksmith in a D&D world, I'd make nothing else but crowbars!
LaoKhanWei 10-22-05, 03:46 PM	10' chains cost 30gp. That's twice as much as a Longsword!.
LaoKhanWei 10-22-05, 03:53 PM	Then I guess they'd be buying their food since they live in the city (thus having no chance to grow it). Chunk of Meat - 3 sp, outside their price range Chunk of Cheese - 1 sp, outside their price range Bread - 2 cp, this is likely what 90% of their meals consist of There are no vegetable price listings. Seems like it'd be nice to have a whole sourcebook devoted to everyday life in Eberron.
Just another user 10-22-05, 04:02 PM	Like said those are price for adventurers, and adventurers get everything at an higher price, I suppose it goes something like this (http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=122) . :D
Gurv 10-22-05, 05:31 PM	Like said those are price for adventurers, and adventurers get everything at an higher price, I suppose it goes something like this (http://www.giantitp.com/cgi-bin/GiantITP/ootscript?SK=122) . :D Rich always hits on exactly this kind of point. But the truth is, most of the people living in a D&D setting are actually living in abject poverty. We modern folk may never realize what wonder it is to eat a meal every single day, and some of us even get more than one! And note that "chunk of meat" and "chunk of cheese" doesn't say "one meal's worth"...I think you could get a few meals out of a chunk. Truth be told, in those times, there really wasn't anything like a middle class, at least not in the way we seem to like them in D&D. You were either living hand to mouth and barely making it, or wealthy. It isn't the price of food in D&D which is unrealistic; it's your view on how much and how often these people actually get to eat.
Euangelion 10-22-05, 06:08 PM	It's also why most people outside of towns (where wages start to get high enough to support markets) grow/catch/hunt their own food.
garner_adam 10-22-05, 06:16 PM	Yeah I wish the economics in D&D would be better addressed. As it stands a first level character with +2 wisdom modifier and four ranks in a professsion stands a good chance of making eight gold a week! His untrained assistants average seven silver a week! (PHB page 80) Now it becomes more bizarre. Under the Profession skill heading it mentions: ... apothecary, boater, bookkeeper, brewer, cook, driver, farmer, fisher, guide, herbalist, herder, hunter, innkeeper, lumberjack, miller, miner, poerter, rancher, sailor, scribe, siege engineer, stable hand, tanner, teamster, woodcutter... as example professions. So that is to say the cook's assitant makes ten times less than the cook him self. Is the division that great? But wait... that means that when you meet a miner you know he's loaded. And the other guys with the picks? Their his slaves *cough* assistants.
LuciferNietzsche 10-22-05, 09:10 PM	Rich always hits on exactly this kind of point. But the truth is, most of the people living in a D&D setting are actually living in abject poverty. We modern folk may never realize what wonder it is to eat a meal every single day, and some of us even get more than one! And note that "chunk of meat" and "chunk of cheese" doesn't say "one meal's worth"...I think you could get a few meals out of a chunk. Truth be told, in those times, there really wasn't anything like a middle class, at least not in the way we seem to like them in D&D. You were either living hand to mouth and barely making it, or wealthy. It isn't the price of food in D&D which is unrealistic; it's your view on how much and how often these people actually get to eat. Granted, you're right. But there's just one problem, that doesn't apply as monolithcally to society and culture in D&D as it did in the real medieval time. It's just like the fact that in a real world of that type of society, women would not be viable characters, but in D&D, for the sake of being compatible with our modern thought, and the law, women must be equal to men in the game. The same is true of the poor. There are no serfs in D&D, and the poor are far less poor than their real world counterparts ever were. The problem arises in that the lower, and yes there is a middle class, and the upper class live a little differently than their real world counterparts, but D&D uses something more akin to real world economics of that age with regard to wages and prices. That doesn't work. But, since it never really comes up because it really only affects NPCs, everyone ignores it. It's not necessary to fix it, but it might open up some interesting opportunities if it WERE fixed.
Phaseroth 10-22-05, 09:16 PM	Bread - 2 cp, this is likely what 90% of their meals consist of Oh we used to dream of bread! We had nothing but cold gruel to eat every day, without so much as a moldy crust of bread to clean our plates with!"
LaoKhanWei 10-23-05, 08:56 PM	If there is no middle class than why are there large cities? Large cities do not exist without a middle class! I also think you're a bit to stuck in thinking of D&D settings as medieval. Khorvaire nations obviously aren't medieval, they're at least Renaissance. My problem isn't that standard of living doesn't jive with the modern world, it's that it's inconsistant with Europe during the Age of Exploration, which seems the closest match for Khorvaire.
zambuka 10-24-05, 01:21 AM	It lists a craftsman (A skilled worker, middle class) as making 3 sp/day. A quick look at common item costs lists a common meal at 3 sp per day. That's the price of a purchased meal, ie how much it costs to go to an inn and buy a meal. Now your typical commoner isn't going to go and eat out at a tavern or inn every single day. The problem is not poor economics, the problem is you are looking at it all from the wrong perspective and looking at the wrong things to determine cost of living. You need to look at trade goods to see how much it costs to feed a person for a day (if they prepare their own meals). A pound of wheat costs 1cp A single chicken costs 2cp You could say a dozen eggs cost maybe 4cp A pound of staple veges (carrot, cabbage, maybe potato) 2cp Cook at home and 10 cp (1sp) will happily feed a family of 4 leaving 2 sp to pay for rent, bills, clothing etc. The commoner of the 5 nations is reasonably well off, with enough money to feed himself and his family, keep them reasonably clothed and warm in winter and still have a bit of extra money for the rare luxury; a pound of salt will last a year if used sparingly and maybe treat the family to a night out once a month. The daily meal costs even less if you live out in open land where you can keep chickens for eggs and meat, a goat for milk and a couple of breeding pigs for meat. Although outside cities and large towns the pay will be lower, but that is offset by the lower cost of food and living. While the commoner in Khorvaire is not exactly wealthy they are not poverty stricken either. The only place you are going to find real poverty is in the bigger cities and towns where the rent is higher and unskilled labor is a cheap and low paying job. Even so, the commoner with some skills, like your example of the chef, is going to live is Sharn without too much trouble, provided they don't partake in too many of the available luxuries. Edit: in more cosmopolitan and egalitarian areas like Sharn both adult members of a house could work in skilled jobs giving a massive 6sp income per day, a family like that would be quite well off. A family like that, even as commoners, could take out a loan to buy some minor magic item to help around the house without reducing their living standards too much. Edit 2: This family could also afford a live-in domestic, someone to cook and clean and look after the children. The domestic won't have a high income, maybe 5 or 6 coppers a day, but they have their food and rent paid for by the family.