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--- dnd:campaigns:waterdeep:economics [2023/12/31 12:20] – [Economics] ken
+++ dnd:campaigns:waterdeep:economics [2024/01/20 19:03] (current) – ken
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 =====Economics=====
-e commoner life and economy
+this page is for campaign-specific economics stuff
+  * [[business]]
-I've been trying to figure out how the economy surrounding commoners work in 5e. A common complaint against DnD is the farmers inability to actually live with the prices provided by the game books, and I wanted to know how accurate these claims are. Despite it not having that big an effect on actual gameplay, I'm one of those people that have to know how everything fits together when I am creating a world, and it is easy to get confused when comparing the different prices in the PHB. I'm a big fan of the simplicity in 5e, but it is at times frustratingly simple, so I decided to make some tables based on social status.  Relevant pages are 157 - 159 in the PHB, and 127 in the DMG.
+see the main dnd [[:dnd:economics]] page for generic info
-&nbsp;
-Sadly, the books are not enough to create a satisfactory overview of economic life in DND, so we'll have to mess with stuff a bit. Below is the process. If you don't care about the process and only want to see the finished table, scroll down.
-&nbsp;
-On page 159 we learn that unskilled workers are paid 2 sp per day, while skilled workers (anyone performing a service requiring proficiency) are paid 2 gp per day. On page 158 we learn that unskilled workers tend to live a poor lifestyle, while the skilled ones lead a comfortable life. The price of each lifestyle neatly match the wage of the worker. We assume the same is true for other social statuses, and can therefore construct our first table. I've converted the daily income and lifestyle to monthly.
-&nbsp;
-Social status | Minimum income/month | Lifestyle/month | Profit/month |
----------------|----------------------------|------------------|-----------------|
-Poor *(unskilled labourer, costermongers, peddlers, thieves, mercenaries)* | 60 sp | 60 sp | 0 sp |
-Modest *(soldiers with families, labourers, students, priests, hedge wizards)* | 300 sp | 300 sp | 0 sp |
-Comfortable *(merchants, skilled tradespeople, military officers)* | 600 sp | 600 sp | 0 sp |
-Wealthy *(highly successful merchants, a favoured servant of the royalty, or the owner of a few small businesses)* | 1200 sp | 1200 sp | 0 |
-Aristocratic *(politicians, guild leaders, high priests)* | 3000 sp | 3000 sp | 0 sp |
-&nbsp;
-As you can see, this creates ranges for each social class. The minimum wage of a Modest NPC is 300 sp/month, but she can earn up to 599 sp and still be considered modest. The minimum wage is also the average wage for that social class, as we learned from PHB 159. This is the closest we'll get without messing with anything, and if we wanted we could stop here. We could say that the average NPC of any given social class makes just enough to support their lifestyle, but not enough to save anything. A few would be able to save or spend extra money, and a few wouldn't be able to keep up. This is actually all you need, but it isn't entirely satisfactory.
-&nbsp;
-First of all, the lifestyle cost is intended for an adventurer. It assumes he buys all his meals, rents lodging and pays for the reparation of weapons and tools. Clearly, this is not the case for all NPCs. Thus, we have to reduce the lifestyle expense of NPCs to accommodate for preparing their own meals, fixing their own stuff and owning their own home. Disclaimer: Many NPCs, especially of the lower classes, would probably in fact be renting and not owning, while the higher classes would not be preparing their own meals or fixing their own stuff. Regardless, I have decided to reduce all lifestyles equally for the sake of 5e simplicity. As we will see later, it generally works out anyway. The question is how much we reduce it by. Of course, there are not guidelines in the books regarding this, but the average today is between 40 % and 70 %, from what I can gather. I'll go with 50 %.
-&nbsp;
-Second, the table only accounts for the NPCs lifestyle expenses. They also have a business to maintain. This is where the difference from our reduction in lifestyle evens out. The poor classes might have to rent, but they generally don't have to maintain their business, as they work for someone else. The homeowners, however, often have a business maintain. So now we pull up the DMG on page 127 and look at maintenance costs. Sadly, it is a complete mess. The maintenance for a farm is 5 sp per day, and that includes the pay for a skilled worked and two unskilled ones. The DMG states we can find the details of skilled and unskilled workers in the PHB. We already did that, and a skilled worker earns 2 gp per day. The minimum maintenance cost of a farm would therefore be 2 gp (for the skilled worker) plus 4 sp (for the unskilled workers), and that is excluding repairs, feeding the animals, maintaining equipment etc. What WoTC were thinking when they made those tables we will never know. I tried playing around with the numbers for maintenance cost for a while, and ended up with it being a third of monthly income. Remember, the farmer farms his own farm, so again the cost is lower than for an adventurer.
-&nbsp;
-Now the table looks like this:
-&nbsp;
-Social status | Minimum income/month | Lifestyle/month | Upkeep/month| Profit/month |
----------------|----------------------------|------------------|-----------------|-----------------|
-Poor *(unskilled labourer, costermongers, peddlers, thieves, mercenaries)* | 60 sp | 30 sp | 20 sp | 10 sp |
-Modest *(soldiers with families, labourers, students, priests, hedge wizards)* | 300 sp | 150 sp | 100 sp | 50 sp |
-Comfortable *(merchants, skilled tradespeople, military officers)* | 600 sp | 300 sp | 200 sp | 100 sp |
-Wealthy *(highly successful merchants, a favoured servant of the royalty, or the owner of a few small businesses)* | 1200 sp | 600 sp | 400 sp | 200 |
-Aristocratic *(politicians, guild leaders, high priests)* | 3000 sp | 1500 sp | 1000 sp | 500 sp |
-&nbsp;
-It is starting to look like something. We probably want to add some taxes though, these peasants seem a bit rich. There are as many ways to tax poor peasants as there are rogues in a roll20 campaign, but yet again I went for simplicity: A form of poll tax. Every commoner over the age of 14 pays a set tax based on his social status, not his actual income. I am a kind ruler, the tax is 10 %. You can obviously set it as high or low as you want according to the avarice of your ruler or whether or not money is needed for an incoming war/building of a giant statue. The commoners will start losing money at 17 %.
-&nbsp;
-With taxes, our final table looks like this:
-&nbsp;
-Social status | Minimum income/month | Lifestyle/month | Upkeep/month| Taxes/month | Profit/month |
----------------|----------------------------|------------------|-----------------|-----------------|---------------|
-Poor *(unskilled labourer, costermongers, peddlers, thieves, mercenaries)* | 6 gp | 3 gp | 2 gp | 6 sp | 4 sp |
-Modest *(soldiers with families, labourers, students, priests, hedge wizards)* | 30 gp | 15 gp | 10 gp | 3 gp | 2 gp |
-Comfortable *(merchants, skilled tradespeople, military officers)* | 60 gp | 30 gp | 20 gp | 6 gp | 4 gp |
-Wealthy *(highly successful merchants, a favoured servant of the royalty, or the owner of a few small businesses)* | 120 gp | 60 gp | 40 gp | 12 gp | 8 gp |
-Aristocratic *(politicians, guild leaders, high priests)* | 300 gp | 150 gp | 100 gp | 30 gp | 20 gp |
-&nbsp;
-This seems okay. We see that the commoners of DnD are not so freakishly poor as some believe, and if a community pools together its savings they might be able to pay some helpful heroes. Quite a large sum flow through them in the course of a week, but they don't have a lot to spend. Many of them have a family to take care of, spends some nights a month drinking at the tavern, or have to pay for unexpected stuff not covered by lifestyle and business maintenance, so their actual savings each month will generally be lower than their profit. A poor worker can spend 1 silver a week on beer at the tavern, but he won't be saving much if that's his choice. It will take a modest NPC a bit over a year to save up for a healing potion, two years for the antitoxin for his sick daughter. The comfortable smith can buy a second set of tools after 5 months of hard work, while the successful merchant can buy a magnifying glass to more accurately assess gems in about a year. After little more than a month the minor noble can buy a vial of acid to stop the mouth of that pesky guild leader.
-Everything seems to line up quite nicely with the prices in the PHB.
-&nbsp;
-* Money is an abstraction. More often than not, the NPCs will not see their pay in the form of coins, but of produce or services. The same applies to their taxes.
-* The monthly costs are also abstractions. Some NPCs might get their pay on a weekly basis, while others only get their money a few times a year.
-&nbsp;
-I may have grossly miscalculated something, or failed to think of something important. All input is welcome.
-&nbsp;
-**Example Town**
-&nbsp;
-Bobville is a small mining community few cartographers have bothered to put on the map. It is ruled by the local lord, Duke Robert Bobson, a distant cousin to the lord of the region. Some 200 people live in the village and surrounding land. 115 are poor. Those are the farmhands, servants and young shop assistants and so forth. They yield 690 sp in taxes each month. 55 people in Bobville have a modest income. They are farmers, mineworkers, carpenters, a priest, guards and minor merchants. They yield 1650 sp in taxes each month. Only 5 people in Bobville have a comfortable income. The smith, the innkeeper, the captain of the guard, the apothecary and the old woman running the general store. They yield 300 sp each month. 3 people are wealthy. One is Gorm, Duke Bobsons trusted bodyguard, while the other is his favourite servant and advisor. The third is Milo, the halfling in charge of the mining operations in the area. They yield 360 sp in taxes each month. In total this is 178 people paying 3000 sp in taxes each month, allowing Bob to lead a lavish life of fine wines and soft cloths. The rest of the population are children under the age of 14.
-&nbsp;
-Robin is one of the poor people of Bobville. He rents a small room in a flophouse in the village, and makes a profit of 4 sp a month from his work as an assistant in Old Granny Moe's *Tools and Things*. It is honest work, and one day he hopes to own a shop for himself. Every day on his way to work he passes the tavern, and every day he promises himself to walk past on his way back as well. He seldom does. One ale doesn't hurt anyone, Robin says to himself outside the door of *The Smiling Cat*. Just one. Before Robin enters, however, a party of four interrupt him.
-"Good sir, you wouldn't happen to know where we can find a smithy?" Their armours gleam in the setting sunlight, and the wizards golden hair flows in a silent wind Robin cannot feel.
-"uuh, sure. Just head down this road, you can't miss it on the right."
-"Thanks, bro", says the warrior. He casually hands Robin a small pouch, before the party continues on their way. Robin looks into the pouch. 10 shining gold coins smile back at him. He shakes his head. He will never understand the logic of adventurers. Two ales then. When did Robin ever only drink one?
-&nbsp;
-The Sparrows family live a modest life. They own a small shack just inside the village wall, though they have to pay rent for the land. It's nothing fancy, but it's clean and can house them all. Yes, they all have to sleep in the same room, but better to sleep with family than strangers in the inn. Bob Miller never thought of his name as mere happenstance, surely a Bob in Bobville has a destiny awaiting somewhere. He's been waiting for a while now. Bob spends his days standing guard outside the duke's mansion. His two oldest sons are farmhands in the outskirts of the village, while the youngest is apprenticed to the blacksmith. A hefty sum is paid for that apprenticeship, but it is worth it. If Bob doesn't achieve greatness, his youngest son will. He named him after himself, just to make sure. Names hold power, everyone knows that. Jane Sparrow is a seamstress, bringing in some extra coin for the family. The proud parents want to buy a nice present for their daughter's upcoming birthday. Everyone should get a nice present on their 10th summer, farmer and noble alike.
-&nbsp;
-Helgun Starling is comfortable, running Bobville's only smithy. She lives in a nice room above the smithy, but spends most of her time downstairs. There's always work to be done, horseshoes to make. It's a dangerous trade, however. Iron is hot. Helgun stocks up on healing potions just in case. Better safe than sorry. The apprenticeship of the young Bob Sparrow is welcome, as she never had children of her own. She didn't really realise how lonely she had been until that boy came along. Now the smithy seems eerily empty after he leaves for the day. He's a hardworking lad, that one, quick to understand the trade. Much like herself, come to think of it. Helgun is a woman of few words and less faults. Gambling is not a fault, it's a hobby. Especially when you're as good as she is. Of course she feels sorry for the young man. 10 gold is a hefty sum to lose. Gods know where he came over that kind of money.
-&nbsp;
-Gorm Peacock is a man you can trust with your life, which the Duke does. He lives on the second floor of the duke's mansion, and spends most of his waking hours with the man. Watching the young duke grow into the man he is today has been a pleasure. Sure, he may be overly fond of the moonherb and pale wines of the south, but he rules fairly. It is coming to and end, however. Gorm's swordhand is not as fast as it used to be, and his wife's health has worsened in the past few months. He has been to the priest and the apothecary countless times, but nothing seems to help. Time always has a way of catching up, even with the best of us. Gorm is saving up for retirement. Living with the duke has made him accustomed to a certain lifestyle, in start contrast to the hardships he suffered in his youth. In a few years time he should be able to buy himself a decent farm and a few honest workers. Maybe down south, so he can taste that pale wine for himself
-====Business====
-===Fixing up Trollskull Manor===
-up front for guild licencing and 1000gp for renovations taking 12 days
-===Running the Tavern===
-Every tenday, roll percentile. OPTIMAL Advertising is 30gp/tenday to add 30 to roll. (WDH p41)
-|20 or less: |Loss of 90 gp.|
-|21-30: |Loss of 60 gp.|
-|31-40: |Loss of 30 gp.|
-|41-60: |Break even|
-|61-80:| Profits = 1d6 × 5 gp.|
-|81-90:| Profits = 2d8 × 5 gp.|
-|91 or more:| Profits = 3d10 × 5 gp.|
-====Real Estate====
-|Single story wooden house (~3 rooms)| 1,000gp|
-|Two story wooden building (30x40 ft)| 1,500gp|
-|Stone building (30x40 ft)| 3,000gp|
-|Tower |10,000gp|
-|Mansion| 40,000gp|
-|Keep |75,000gp|
-|Palace| 175,000gp|
-|Small Castle |250,000gp|
-|Large Castle| 500,000gp|