Llyarden |
So I was trying to stat an encounter which involves some farmers having to pay 'protection money' to the corrupt town watch and I started trying to work out how much money these farmers would be making.
It's two farms with a total of 10 occupants. Three of these occupants actually work on the farm; the others are too old or young.
Assume each farmer is a 1st-level commoner with 11 Wis. Their Profession (farmer) skill would be +4. On average (taking 10), they would each be making 7gp per week. That equates to 21gp/week, or 82 gp/month.
Now assume that they are living in poor conditions, which seems reasonable. With 10 occupants, that would be 30gp/month they are paying.
That still leaves them in profit to the tune of 52gp/month, which seems rather a lot for some random farmers.
Am I missing something here?
Dave Justus |
3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I believe you can assume that the Pathfinder Game System is not the worlds best tool for complex economic modeling.
Basically, all the economic equations in Pathfinder are shortcuts so player characters can get something close enough and then get back to being a hero without worrying too much about filling out their 10-40 forms.
You can't make an economy out of the Pathfinder equations. Don't try. Just make up how much income you want the farmers to have based on the world you want to present and the rewards you want available to the PCs.
JoeJ |
What you're missing is that the rules for prices/wages are as much fantasy as the magic system. And contradictory as well - the daily pay rate for hirelings in the CRB is substantially less than those hirelings should be making according the the Craft & Profession rules.
Unfortunately, if you want to have anything that even remotely resembles a realistic economic system you're going to have to create it yourself.
Ravingdork |
A poster worked it all out using the rules not too long ago and found that farmers actually did fairly well for themselves, and it wasn't so much that it didn't make sense.
Maybe someone could dig up the thread? (I'm a bit too busy to do it myself at the moment.)
Deadmanwalking |
What do you mean by farmers? If you're talking day-laborers or peasants who don't own their own farms...then yeah, that looks about right, though I'd expect more people than that to be working.
Frankly, 82 gp just isn't that much money. Looking at gear, a GP is about 10 dollars or so. $820 per month for three people on top of the equivalent of rent is just not a lot of money. Before rent, that's like $273 per worker per month, and something like $3k a year...at U.S. prices for most stuff. That's not just poor, but dirt poor. And that's ignoring the dependents.
Deadmanwalking |
A poster worked it all out using the rules not too long ago and found that farmers actually did fairly well for themselves, and it wasn't so much that it didn't make sense.
Maybe someone could dig up the thread? (I'm a bit too busy to do it myself at the moment.)
I've done this calculation. Mine involved people owning their own farms, though.
Chemlak |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
A poster worked it all out using the rules not too long ago and found that farmers actually did fairly well for themselves, and it wasn't so much that it didn't make sense.
Maybe someone could dig up the thread? (I'm a bit too busy to do it myself at the moment.)
I believe THIS is the thread you mean.
Chemlak |
Onyxlion wrote:Why not use the downtime and running a business rules, they aren't that bad to be honest.He is. Hence the figures noted above.
I'm not so sure. He quoted the per week, rather than per day. Per week figures are straight out of core.
Chemlak |
That's the one, Chemlak! (How is it that you are always so helpful? Is that like your super hero power or something?)
I'm as grumpy and unhelpful as the next guy (Gorbacz, that's your cue!) far more than I'd care to admit, but I try not to bring it to forums. You should have seen me in my younger, wilder days.
And my superhero power is apparently being wise (sometimes), at least according to a number of people on the old City of Heroes MMORPG forums.
Anyway, to say something vaguely on topic, the thread I linked is a really good one for Pathfinder demographics. Well worth the read.
Orfamay Quest |
So I was trying to stat an encounter which involves some farmers having to pay 'protection money' to the corrupt town watch and I started trying to work out how much money these farmers would be making.
It's two farms with a total of 10 occupants. Three of these occupants actually work on the farm; the others are too old or young.
Assume each farmer is a 1st-level commoner with 11 Wis. Their Profession (farmer) skill would be +4. On average (taking 10), they would each be making 7gp per week. That equates to 21gp/week, or 82 gp/month.
Now assume that they are living in poor conditions, which seems reasonable. With 10 occupants, that would be 30gp/month they are paying.
That still leaves them in profit to the tune of 52gp/month, which seems rather a lot for some random farmers.
Am I missing something here?
Well, if you think they're making too much money to be living in 'poor' conditions, bump them up to 'average,' reflecting the fact that they're doing all right as farmers. Oh, whups. That means they need to spend 100gp a month to maintain that standard and they only have 82gp.
Which means, no, that's not really a lot of money.
Just as a quick example, at a 'poor' quality of life, they're probably borderline malnourished -- the 'poor' quality of living includes 'poor' meals, but anything higher needs to be paid for. A 'poor' meal is "bread, baked turnips, onions, and water." If he wants a glass of ale or a meal with meat in it, that's a 'common' meal ("bread, chicken stew, carrots, and watered-down ale or wine"), and that needs to be paid for out of the profits, at 3sp a meal a person. Giving these people one meat meal a day would be 3sp/person * 10 people * 30 days/month = 900 sp or 90 gp, which again puts us over the limit.
Even if you assume that you can cook at home for half the costs of the meals listed, one meat meal a day would cost 45 of your 52 gp in profits.
Mudfoot |
And, as intimated above, it assumes that you're not paying rent. And that rent can be (and will be) set as high as the farmer can sensibly afford. Then there are the miscellaneous contingencies, saving up for retirement and sick days, daughter's wedding and the like. It's actually a fairly reasonable figure.
Juda de Kerioth |
Why not use the downtime and running a business rules, they aren't that bad to be honest.
can you teach me?
for example... Monte rigioni from assassins creed 2it has:
1 mine
1 prostibule
1 blacksmith
1 mersenaries wharehouse
1 leather worker
1 art merchant
1 church
1 blacksmith
a lot of houses (near 100 i guess)
a town plaza and a statue.
Can you traslate to that system? i want to use it too but i need to see how someone else work with that
Onyxlion |
can you teach me?
for example... Monte rigioni from assassins creed 2it has:
1 mine
1 prostibule
1 blacksmith
1 mersenaries wharehouse
1 leather worker
1 art merchant
1 church
1 blacksmith
a lot of houses (near 100 i guess)
a town plaza and a statue.Can you traslate to that system? i want to use it too but i need to see how someone else work with that
Yeah, I'm at work but I'll see what I can whip up. Might not be able to post till late or tomorrow.
Onyxlion |
The system also completely ignores things like winter, crops dying, flooding, drought, infestation, soil quality... So they better be squirreling away a lot of that as rainy day savings/stores.
Actually those expenses are built into the system, so you don't have to map out the whole ecology of the world.
Inneliese |
Don't forget that they will need to pay taxes, possibly pay rent on the farm if they don't own the land outright, will need to buy new clothes, will often splurge to eat better on high holidays... There's also the cost of replacing/repairing the tools they use for farming. If a tine breaks off of a pitchfork, they'll need to go visit the blacksmith. Then there's the amount the family tithes to their church each week, the amount spent on healing when someone falls ill, the amount they have to save up so they can buy a commission in the army for their son/daughter...
Koujow |
Sadly, the rules for how money works in RPGs are just silly. If you think about it, whenever you and your fellow adventurers come back from the nearby dungeon and sell off your loot, the amount of gold that would be exchanging hands should completely destabilizing the economy of many small towns. After all, even small villages still have the resources to buy and sell minor magic items that often cost hundreds of gold. All while working next to people who only make a few gold per day. So either adventurers are very, very common or magic dealers in some of these places just sit around for months waiting for them to pass by and buy/sell incredible amounts of loot.
I always felt like Paizo should make a book full of non-adventurer items and spells. Like, farming equipment that will animate on command or a horseless carriage (not the automobile. XD) or my favorite from Exalted, a quill that never runs out of ink (essentially, a magic pen). Make these items cheaper than adventurers loot, so that a low farmer might be able to own one or two of them, but a wealthy farmer or land lord might own a bunch. I guess that moves slightly more towards epic fantasy, since even the lowest rabble would have magic items, but hey.
zagnabbit |
Well for real world perspective.
A modern American Family Farm; which is a seriously large small Buisness, may have access to 200 acres of arable land. Per Acre seed stock is a significant cost, a full cycle of maintenance, irrigation, pesticide and harvest can put that operating cost at $70,000 an acre.
When a good year rolls up, it's very profitable. A bad year is a huge setback; 3 bad years in a row = disaster. Whatever money is left over at the end of a year is literally the seed money for the next year.
In PF; 52 gp left over will dissappear quick when animals get sick or through a drought.
Deadmanwalking |
A farm costs a bit over 2000 gp. And a working one produces 10 gp a day or a bit less (including the farmer's salary). So it's a lot less implausible that a town with dozens of them (and thus 240 gp being made there ever day or so on average...and most would likely arrive in a lump sum when the crops are sold) and that's only from farming, not any other industries the town has. That being the case, the lot from lowish level adventurers, and the ability to keep around lower level magic items doesn't strain the economy beyond belief.
Now, that 10 gp per day doesn't necessarily all go to the farmer (8.3 of it goes to whoever owns the farm...so peasants, serfs, and other tenant farmers get much less), but it's still money going into the area's economy.