NOTE: This is not a discussion about whether crafting makes any sense or whether the system even works.
So, because I have nothing better to do with my time, apparently, I decided to take a look at the various skills in DnD that allow a character to make money: craft, profession and perform. Ignoring magical crafting, I decided to figure out what the average wages of the various professions are.
I made a couple of assumptions about the various characters involved. The baseline character was a level 5 commoner with all 10s in his stats. It doesn't matter what his profession is (farmer, baker, librarian, sailor, etc.), he's just a basic laborer. With two skill points in Profession(X), your average worker can earn 9 gold a week, which is 468 gold over the course of a year. Subtracting the price of a loaf of bread a day, two hunks of meat and two hunks of cheese a week, Average Joe nets 116 gold a year. This will buy him a masterwork tool and a new set of clothes every year with a couple of coins left over for a pint or two a week to forget the fact that he's a commoner.
Next we'll take a look at your average performer. In a decent sized city, a street performer who has specialized in his trade (full ranks, skill focus, masterwork item and a +2 CHA) can command a +15 to his skill check at level 5. This nets him 3.5 gold per day, 1278 gold per year (assuming he works every single day). Dropping 100 gold on a masterwork performing item, he can afford a "good" meal and a pitcher of wine every day and still have 922 gold to buy himself a villa with.
Now let's take a look at a blacksmith. I am assuming here that our master craftsman is able to sell every item he makes. Also, since he could make any of the dozens of weapons or armors, I'm going to give an average weaponsmith and an average armorsmith. Your "average" weapons costs 32.5 gold (and is a martial weapon) and your average armor costs 259 gold. The "average" weapon nets the weaponsmith 21.6 gold per unit. He can make 2 units per week with his +15 to crafting (and using the accelerated crafting DC). Your average skilled weaponsmith can net himself 2246 gold per year. The "average" armor nets the armorsmith 172.6 gold per suit. It takes him 2.7 weeks to create a suit and, since the crafting rules are based on one check per week, this means he can make 17 suits a year. With this your average skilled armorsmith can net himself 2934 gold per year. He does pretty well for himself.
If we take a look at your average alchemist (with the same skill bonus as the blacksmith), his typical fare costs 31.8 gold, which nets him 21.2 gold per item. He can make two alchemical items per week, just like the weaponsmith, which garners him 2204.8 gold per year. He does have to buy a 200 gold alchemist lab to do this, so he's slightly worse off than the blacksmiths, who only have to spend 100 gold for their specialty items.
Now, we have the weird one. The guys who make the random gear that fills up the rest of the equipment table, like ladders and nails and cloth bags. Since I don't want to have to divide each of those various categories up into their component craft skills (leather, wood, fabric, glass, pottery, etc.) I'm just going to find an average sundry item and assume the maker has the appropriate skill, feat and item. Since these are relatively more common folk, I'm only giving them a +1 INT, which nets them a +14 to their skill. The average sundry item costs 41.3 gold (since spy glasses and water clocks are so expensive) which nets the crafter 27.5 gold per item. Since he can make one item per week (actually, one every 4 days but the craft rules are weird), your general crafter makes 1430 gold per year. This puts him slightly above your common laborer.
Incidentally, an apprentice to any of the various crafters (who, by RAW, has no ranks in a craft skill) only makes 36.5 gold per year. He had better be juggling on the weekends if he wants to survive.
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One of my players wanted to make his own Adamantine Full Plate to save himself some money, but then after we did the math we found out that it would have taken his character roughly 8 years to make it...
165000/400= 412.5 weeks (he had +10 to his craft, so assuming average 20*20)
412.5/52= 7.93 years
That's a little ridiculous, but seeing as Adamantine armor is generally the stuff of myths (at least outside of D&D/Pathfinder) it would make sense for it to take a really long time to make... But he decided that rather than walking into the mountains for a few years that he would just keep adventuring and try to find one that was already made...
EDIT: It makes it seem like adamantine armor would be especially hard to come across if it took this long to make.. Of course, his int was really low. I'm sure that if someone was dedicated to it they could do it in much less time due to having a higher check.
And just using craft to make money per week, along with upkeep rules, and your fine.
Interesting posts, and interesting examinations of the "economy."
Unless your PCs are actively involved in some kind of commoner revolution (Kingmaker?), this stuff comes up so rarely, and means so little to the PCs, that it's basically ignored. Commoners can't afford magic items. PCs can.
Particularly good PCs, such as paladins, might have a reason to give a crap about the status of commoners. A 5th level party would only want to pay for some fresh expendables, like food and rope, and maybe rescue a baby or something just for the story goal and XP.
It makes sense that benevolent rulers would have content commoners who don't suffer a lot. If local farmers are being attacked by monsters, a good ruler would send appropriate forces to quell the threat.
Evil rulers would make arbitrary rules to game the system and keep their commoners too poor to revolt or move away. They like their people scared and helpless. Even then, the harvest must be adequate to support their base population. They will still respond to the biggest problems, just to keep their peasants alive and producing.
By 5th level, it rarely matters to PCs.
I think my only real comment is that these are lvl 5 people, so they really should be well to do compared to the norm. These are the master craftsmen and the people at the top of their trade in most campaigns. I would be interested to see the math done for lvl 1-2 character, where most of the NPCs lie, but I suspect it is not that far off.
From what I can tell, the only really broken thing about the economy is the fact that magic items are on a different scale than everything else. I think this is where art objects and the like should come in, but there aren't too many rules for bridging the gap between the economies. Personally, I like using mundane things as money sinks to keep WBL in check, and try to keep the players involved in the commoner's economy, even if it is because they are their landlord.
I did the math for a level 2 farmer. He earns 416 gold per year.
The numbers for the crafters would change considerably, since their craft bonus would drop from a +15 to a +12 and, with average rolls, put them out of range of accelerated crafting.
If you go with crafting by the day instead of by the week, our level 2 weaponsmith can make a weapon every 5 days. This earns him 1554.9 gold per year, assuming he sells all his weapons. Let's say he has a military contract in a martial state. If you don't allow crafting by the day, he can make one weapon a week, which cuts his potential income down to 1107.6 gold per year.
As for our armorsmith, at level 2, it takes him 5.2 weeks to make a suit of armor. If you allow crafting by the day, this lets him make 10 suits of armor per year and a potential income of 1726 gold. If he crafts by the week, he can make 8 suits per year, which 1380.8 gold per year. Both still set him well above the commoner and his "profession" skill.
Our alchemist was already unable to do accelerated crafting, so he's not as bad off. He still makes 2 items a week, or one item every 4 days. With weekly crafting, he can earn 2204.8 gold per year (the same we will 3 levels from now) and with daily crafting he makes slightly less, at 1934.5 gold per year. This seems slightly curious to me, but alchemy is a weird science.
Our level 2 sundry item maker can still accelerated craft, since his average of 21 to his skill check puts him 10 over the average skill check needed for the average sundry item (can I say "average" again?). He makes an item every 5 days, or one a week, depending on which rules you want to use. With weekly wages he makes 1430 gold per year and with daily wages he can make up to 2007.5 gold per year. At lower levels, furnishing the general store is potentially better than forging armor or weapons.
If you exclude the spy glass maker and the water clock maker, the numbers drop significantly. The average price of a sundry item drops from 41.3 gold per item to 12.7 gold per item and nets our item maker only 8.5 gold per unit. However, since the value of the item went down, the crafting time also went down. He can now craft an item every 3 days, or 3 per week, depending on how you want to do the math. Weekly wages earn him 1326 gold per year and daily wages earn him 1028.5 gold per year. He is still significantly better off than the commoner.
Because I split the water clock and spy glass makers out of the sundry items group, I figure I should calculate their wages too. Each craftsman can make one of their items every 24 weeks, or about 2 per year. Earning 666.6 gold per unit, they make 1333.2 gold per year. Pretty comfortable living, compared to the common item maker.
And now to our journeyman juggler. With his +12 skill bonus, he can only manage a "great" performance every day, rather than a "memorable" one. He averages 1.65 gold per day, and assuming he juggles everyday for a year, he can earn 602.25 gold per year. Ouch. This cuts his wages more than in half. He's barely better off than the industrious farmer, or the sailor who risks his life at sea or the baker who makes the bread he can barely afford.
Our apprentice crafter, with no ranks in a crafting skill, still only makes 36.5 gold per year. Perhaps he should be crafting spoons and lanterns instead.
He's barely better off than the industrious farmer, or the sailor who risks his life at sea or the baker who makes the bread he can barely afford.
Barely better off? Unless he's juggling for monsters and not risking his life like the sailor, he's comparatively pretty well off. :)
I was making an attempt at sarcasm. Being a street performer should not garner better wages than being a sailor or farmer or baker, or any of the other rather necessary professions, but that's what the DnD Economy dictates. I guess the fantasy world favors entertainment as much as the real world does.
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I guess the fantasy world favors entertainment as much as the real world does.
I'm hoping Simon votes off Raistlin. He can't sing for crap.
I was making an attempt at sarcasm. Being a street performer should not garner better wages than being a sailor or farmer or baker, or any of the other rather necessary professions, but that's what the DnD Economy dictates. I guess the fantasy world favors entertainment as much as the real world does.
I'm not sure, but the a low level street performer may have made more money than a farmer in history, if he could get an audience. It would be an interesting thing to look into.
I think one of the things to think about is that the PCs get to pick and choose what skills they pick up because they get to define their character how they want. NPCs do not get that option. There are lots of people who need to farm, and lots who could teach you and use the help. There are reletively few master smiths who can teach an apprentice, and they want to keep it that way so they stay in demand. Likewise, performing is a very fickle thing, and doing it well requires a skilled trainer willing to teach you. These apprenticeships are often hand waved for PCs.
The average sundry item costs 41.3 gold (since spy glasses and water clocks are so expensive)
This is patently absurd, since if you go with a average of item costs, you'd have to go with a weighted average. For every 1 spy glass sold, you'd sell about 1000 pieces of chalk. A uniform average will not do in this case.
Similar for the blacksmith. He doesn't sell his armors evenly. Most armors are leather and studded leather. Some well-to-do folks and nobility may run around in chainshirts. The occasional medium or heavy armor would leave the counter. Full plates are only made to order and made to fit at that.
Well, to be even more accurate, I should have gone in an granualized it even further and done the math on chainmail makers vs. plate mail makers vs. leather/hide armorers. Bowyers are different than mace makers who are different than swordsmiths who are different than the loon that makes spiked chains. I do, however, have something resembling a life and didn't want to dedicate it to sitting down and figuring out the periphery economy of my fantasy world. I had to make concessions to keep my sanity and semblance of a social life. Since there were no readily available data on how many pieces of chalk are sold to the number of spy glasses to the number of bull's eye lanterns, so I just did a simple average. I even did two simple averages for the sundry items, one for the water clock and spy glass and one for everything else. I did it for the level 2 crafter.
I also didn't figure out how long it takes items to sell or what percentage the middlemen take from the crafters or even what percentage of items sell. As I mentioned before, I do like to do something besides metagame analysis of fictional economies.
I would like to point out that it is highly unlikely the weaponsmith can actually sell 2 martial weapons a week, even in a big city. So while he theoretically could make that amount, it is much more likely he spends most of his time making much less doing weapon repairs, sharpening weapons, etc. At a guess, I'd say his yearly wage is likely 1/10th of what you have here due to most of his wares sitting on the shelves for a couple of months. Same for the armorsmith.
NOTE: This is not a discussion about whether crafting makes any sense or whether the system even works.
So, because I have nothing better to do with my time, apparently, I decided to take a look at the various skills in DnD that allow a character to make money: craft, profession and perform. Ignoring magical crafting, I decided to figure out what the average wages of the various professions are.
I made a couple of assumptions about the various characters involved. The baseline character was a level 5 commoner with all 10s in his stats. It doesn't matter what his profession is (farmer, baker, librarian, sailor, etc.), he's just a basic laborer. With two skill points in Profession(X), your average worker can earn 9 gold a week, which is 468 gold over the course of a year. Subtracting the price of a loaf of bread a day, two hunks of meat and two hunks of cheese a week, Average Joe nets 116 gold a year. This will buy him a masterwork tool and a new set of clothes every year with a couple of coins left over for a pint or two a week to forget the fact that he's a commoner.
You seem to neglect the costs of housing and raising a family. (not surprising that many gamers don't take that into account.:) Or the taxes taken by the local lords which tend to skew heavily against the lower classes.
I'd also say that level 5 is a bit on the high side for the average commoner.
Well, not exactly, I just sort of assumed that a mud hut with a thatched roof doesn't really cost much, since it's made out of the stuff in the field where the farmer works. *shrug*
I didn't include things like taxes or banditry or having to fund your kid's adventuring start-up costs (where else do you think starting gold comes from?). All of that money comes from the surplus after food. A new set of clothes and tools every year is probably a bit generous for your typical medieval commoner, so most of that money would probably go for living expenses.
Also, there isn't any data in the core rules on houses and taxes, so I just sort of didn't bother.
Level 5 is as high as I'd ever expect a commoner to go. I also did stats for a level 2 commoner a few posts down from the first.
I would like to point out that it is highly unlikely the weaponsmith can actually sell 2 martial weapons a week, even in a big city. So while he theoretically could make that amount, it is much more likely he spends most of his time making much less doing weapon repairs, sharpening weapons, etc. At a guess, I'd say his yearly wage is likely 1/10th of what you have here due to most of his wares sitting on the shelves for a couple of months. Same for the armorsmith.Actually, if the in-game economy is anything like the one in historic Europe, it is unlikely to be any weaponsmiths in a city, even in a huge one. Or rather, it is either none or lots.
Most weaponsmithing (and armour for that matter) was concentrated to a number of few production centres and the blades are then exported to weaponmerchants who finish the blades (attaching hilts, pommels, decorations if any and the scabbard) and is the one that meets the customer.
This allows the master smith to make the guild-approved maximum number of swords in a day (usually between 5-10 swords a day) and not to sit idle waiting for a customer to walk in.
Very true, but with the prevalence of adventurers in small towns, having a weaponsmith/armorsmith in each town does make rather more sense than in medieval Europe.
Also, I did make the caveat that the above numbers are simplified, and gave a semi-plausable reason why the weapon/armor makers might be selling all their stuff (they are in a busy martial city with a contract with the military). Really, for each one, the numbers listed above are maximum values rather than average values. The local economy (supply and demand, economic flow, etc.) would determine actual wages, but the core books don't get into that.