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I'm currently building a village and am trying to figure out how much a peasant farmer should make a year. This is mostly to try and calculate how large a village needs to be to provide an income for the noble who owns it.
Also, does anyone know of a good source for specific prices for specific hirelings? The noble needs to be able to provide for a small garrison of guards, cooks, and other household staff.
I would suggest reading an article I wrote: Economics of a D&D and Pathfinder World. It might give you a good starting point.
In general an average Intelligence or Wisdom commoner should make about 5 gp per week untrained, or 20 gp per month (240 gp/year). Professionals (1 rank, +3 class skill) will make about 28 gp per month (336 gp/year). Essentially +0.5 gold pieces for every +1 they have over +0 and -0.5 for every -1 they have under +0 in their Craft or Profession.
The average cost of living for an individual is 10 gp/month which includes housing and taxes. It's fair to assume half of it goes to taxes (so the local lord probably accumulates about 5 gp per citizen in his domain if he or she is taxing fairly). Leaving most civilians with a fair lifestyle (though most communities in D&D are at constant risk of things like bandit raiders trying to steal their stuff).
I'll discuss some more in my next post.
Out of curiosity, why?
I mean this as a sincere question. Many feudal nobles had holdings spread out all over (in part because this meant he couldn't maintain one large force as a threat to his lord). So if you needed him to have more money, he has a small interest in a mine that's off the map to the northwest, or a small fief several days' ride south.
I've always found that by locking in this level of detail, I've locked out the possiblity of something better down the road.
Again, I'm just curious, and that information might help out with the answers you receive.
In the real middle ages the answer is next to nothing. A peasant would pay his lord in kind(goods) and with days of yearly required service. They belonged to the land and had limited opportunity to better their station(unless they had special skills). The duties they owed their lord were generally high. After them they rarely had enough left to do anything but feed their families and barter for other necessaries. The nobles would sell the goods they received at regional markets for money. Not saying you have to follow close to historical practice as this is a fantasy game but its a good place to start.
@Ashiel- lgp while a pittance to an adventure is a hell of a lot of money to a commoner(at least if you want to follow something approaching a real world comparison). I would wager most farmers have never seen a gold piece and never had more then a few silver to their name. If they did it was immediately spent.
In the real middle ages the answer is next to nothing. A peasant would pay his lord in kind(goods) and with days of yearly required service. They belonged to the land and had limited opportunity to better their station(unless they had special skills). The duties they owed their lord were generally high. After them they rarely had enough left to do anything but feed their families and barter for other necessaries. The nobles would sell the goods they received at regional markets for money. Not saying you have to follow close to historical practice as this is a fantasy game but its a good place to start.
@Ashiel- lgp while a pittance to an adventure is a hell of a lot of money to a commoner(at least if you want to follow something approaching a real world comparison). I would wager most farmers have never seen a gold piece and never had more then a few silver to their name. If they did it was immediately spent.
The Pathfinder rules model a world that bears almost no to absolutely no resemblance to a real historical period (magic not withstanding).
Someone who is perfectly average and untrained would earn 5 gp/week using the Profession and Craft rules, and your average set of clothes costs between 1 sp and 10 gp, so they certainly have seen gold pieces unless you've made some serious modifications to the rules. :)
As far as hirelings and such goes, it seems fair that most common laborers would in fact earn 5 gp (if you've got a mansion with 30 servants then it costs you about 150 gp/month). For professions that would be woefully underpaid (such as the stable boy who may be ruled to be essentially taking 10 on a Perform check {IE - beggar's wage} for his pay but may live on the grounds).
For local guards and soldiers it depends. I'd probably assume that your basic conscript (like a commoner or expert) would be around 3 to 5 gold pieces per month. More impressive professionals or better trained soldiers would probably be worth more. You might base it on the profession skill but apply modifiers based on factors like proficiencies, BAB, and relevant skills.
First let's set a base pay of 2.5 gp(as if you were taking 10 with a -5 on a Profession check).
Every Hit Die = +0.5 gold
Every +1 BAB = +0.5 gold
Simple Weapon Proficiency = +1 gold (+0.5 if less than full proficiency)
Martial Weapon Proficiency = +1 gold (+0.5 if less than full proficiency)
Exotic Weapon Proficiency = +0.5 gold per weapon
Light Armor Proficiency = +1 gold
Medium Armor Proficiency = +1 gold
Heavy Armor Proficiency = +1 gold
Shield Proficiency = +1 gold
Every Combat Feat = +0.5 gold
Every +1 in a relevant skill = +0.5 gold.
So a 1st level commoner conscript would earn about 3.5 gp per week (1 HD, proficiency with 1 simple weapon), but a 1st level warrior would make 7 gp per week (1 HD, +1 BAB, 2 full weapon proficiencies, proficiency in all armor and shields). Meanwhile a 6th level warrior guard captain might make 16 gp per week (6 HD, +6 BAB, full simple and martial, full armor and shield, 3 combat feats).
For spellcasters you could add the following:
Every Caster Level = +0.5 gold
Highest Level Spell = Spell level * Spell Level * 1 gold (so +1 gp for 1st level, +81 gold for 9th level spells, 0 level spells = +0.5 gp)
Spell Known = +0.1 gp per spell known
So a 1st level Adept who is on retainer or hired as a military medic might be paid 8.2 gp per week (2.5 base, +0.5 for 1 HD, +0.5 for 1 caster level, +1 for simple weapon proficiency, +2.7 for 27 spells known, +1 gp for highest level spell castable).
More to Come in my Next Post
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Part of the reason I ask is that I did some research last night and got that a peasant would farm ~15 acres of land, which produced ~9 bushels of wheat/acre, which by modern counting methods is 60 lbs/bushel, which sells for 1 cp/lb according to the very beginning of the equipment chapter for a total of ~76.5 gp/year. This is a little over 2 sp/day which actually fits almost perfectly with the 1 sp/day the DMG stated.
Just a quick update (next post will discuss running your community) but you might not want to use the formulas for anything in our own reality when it comes to D&D economics. First off, the vast majority of the prices in the equipment lists and trade goods are rather arbitrary. So arbitrary in fact that in 3.x D&D certain items were bizarrely priced (you could actually buy iron pots and then sell them as iron and make a profit, or purchase a 10 ft. ladder, break it in half, and sell both ten foot poles for more than the cost of the ladder, etc). For an example of goofy pricing in the PF rules, just look at chickens (you can buy a chicken for 2 cp, which based on the services costs means that you can acquire 2 full grown chickens for the cost of a single mug of ale).
Plus the price of wheat and/or crops may be influenced by things like magic (plant growth can affect a mile-wide radius and increase crop productions by 30%). In other words, D&D/Pathfinder is not our world in the middle ages.
There's also considering that farmers do more than grow single crops. They often spread out their time and efforts because it is safer and more productive. Farms with fields, goats, cows, pigs, oxen, whatever. But all of it is abstracted to Profession. :)
EDIT: Just to give you another example of stupid pricing. A single piece of charcoal costs 5 silver pieces. You can buy 20 pounds of wood for 1 copper pieces. Charcoal is made by burning firewood and heating firewood until it becomes incredibly dry, dark and brittle. As it is right now the secret to amassing huge fortunes in D&D is actually to just buy 1 gold piece worth of firewood and make hundreds of pieces of charcoal.
I would suggest reading an article I wrote: Economics of a D&D and Pathfinder World. It might give you a good starting point.
In general an average Intelligence or Wisdom commoner should make about 5 gp per week untrained, or 20 gp per month (240 gp/year). Professionals (1 rank, +3 class skill) will make about 28 gp per month (336 gp/year). Essentially +0.5 gold pieces for every +1 they have over +0 and -0.5 for every -1 they have under +0 in their Craft or Profession.
The average cost of living for an individual is 10 gp/month which includes housing and taxes. It's fair to assume half of it goes to taxes (so the local lord probably accumulates about 5 gp per citizen in his domain if he or she is taxing fairly). Leaving most civilians with a fair lifestyle (though most communities in D&D are at constant risk of things like bandit raiders trying to steal their stuff).
I'll discuss some more in my next post.
Thanks, that actually helped me as I had forgotten about the cost of living rules.
Part of the reason I ask is that I did some research last night and got that a peasant would farm ~15 acres of land, which produced ~9 bushels of wheat/acre, which by modern counting methods is 60 lbs/bushel, which sells for 1 cp/lb according to the very beginning of the equipment chapter for a total of ~76.5 gp/year. This is a little over 2 sp/day which actually fits almost perfectly with the 1 sp/day the DMG stated.
There are some exceptions to that. The peasant needs to keep 1/3 of that grain to plant the following year, and the noble is going to take 1/3 to 1/2 of the crop as "taxes," and the peasant is going to be eating most of the rest.
The other problem is that medieval farms are tiny compared to what the farmer could have farmed. They have been divided and subdivided so many times that they are down to the smallest possible to support a family.
So now that we have some methods of estimating the income (and thus pay) of our citizens, let's check out what you'd need to do to run your village.
Lord's Income
We're using 5 gold pieces as the base rate of taxation based on the average cost of living. Presumably part of this tax includes living space (so poorer individuals are probably not paying as many taxes by default, and richer individuals may be taxed more). For our experiment we will assume that the village consists entirely of people living average expense lives (so while professionals like blacksmiths pocket more each week they are paying similar taxes to their untrained neighbors).
To add some flavor our local lord shall be Lady Laurel Oakmoon who has inherited some land from her family and is trying to make the best of it but has to deal with problems like goblins raiders and wild beasts.
She is a 1st level Aristocrat with a hamlet of about 50 adults. So her income per week is 50 * 5 gp = 250 gp per week or 1,000 gp per month. She is a noble in her little hamlet and so she is living a Wealthy Lifestyle (100 gp/month) leaving her 900 gp worth of taxes. Out of her 50 adult civilians she hires 10 soldiers to be town guards (1st level warriors) at 280 gp per month and 1 5th level veteran to be the sheriff (5th level warrior) at 48 gp per month. That leaves her with 672 gp per month to hire servants with. Servants she hires include a professional butler or maid to cook and keep her mansion (28 gp / month), and some personal guards for her mansion (5 more 1st level guards at 140 gp). That leaves her at 504 gp left to decide what she needs to do with each month (which you can round out her servants or begin stockpiling it for other purposes).
Meanwhile, the hamlet itself has 50 citizens. Most of these citizens are earning 10 gp per month more than it costs for them to live and pay taxes. That's 500 gp of wealth each month floating around the town. So in emergencies the lord could tax the citizens more ferociously without making them starve (she could tax up to 20 gp per month leaving most just getting by, or tax them less to make them more wealthy), and she just might if she had to raise a sizable force to defend her lands quickly, or if she was just greedy and wanted more money for her personal uses.
Now keep in mind that the amount of money floating around monthly in the town makes it somewhat easy to understand how adventurers might be hired by townsfolk to investigate or deal with problems that the local lord is uninterested in or unable to solve. Villagers like farmers might come together and pool their extra cash to have adventurers hunt the wolves killing their livestock or to drive away the goblins who are terrorizing the outlying farmsteads.
This sort of domino effect can be used to quickly account for even larger communities.
Q&A Time
As I understand that is only partially true. The peasants would have their own vegetable gardens, chickens for eggs and cows for milk that they would be raising as their main source of food, but the fields they were tending which were used to pay their rents/taxes/tithes and make some extra money to buy necessities they couldn't grow/make themselves would most likely be one crop/animal.
As I noted during my article, income doesn't have to be in the form of actual coinage. The food and livestock that is raised for the family is also a form of income. It has value and would be accounted for in the profession check. Think of it like this.
If I was paid $100 in currency and $200 worth of food I'm essentially making $300. The catch is not all of it is in hard currency. So while the farmer might acquire a certain amount of hard currency by trading his goods a good portion of his "income" is going to living expenses. Instead of selling a goat he had it slaughtered to feed him and his family. His family pickles some vegetables to keep for the winter, etc.
You have to remember that the Craft & Profession checks are an abstraction when it comes to making money. Gold pieces don't magically appear but it due to how trade goods work it is effectively the same as gold pieces. It might be easier to look at it in terms of "productivity" instead of coinage.
Actually the process of making charcoal (in period) is building a giant pile of wood, covering it enough dirt to prevent air from getting in and leaving a few openings which allow air to get in. Once that is done you light it on fire and sit and guard it for about a day or so making sure enough air is getting in to carbonize the wood, but not too much is getting in to destroy it. Then once the process is finished all the holes need to be closed to stop the burning, and then once that has happened you need to wait for it all to cool down and then dig it all up. So I would argue the price of charcoal vs wood is not odd (though I'm not sure what the cost of charcoal is in period and I don't feel like looking that up).
Which period? The period where dragons didn't spit lightning on villagers once per month in exchange for 300 gold pieces worth of silk, livestock, and coins? Or was it the period where studded leather armor existed in real life? Or was it the period where wizards could create stone and iron from thin air and infinite-fuel steam engines could be crafted for less than 5,000 gold pieces? :P
I'm not poking fun at you. Merely trying to drive home the idea that D&D has never been any period of our world. It has some similarities but it has never, will never, and was never been our world in any period of its history. The earlier people understand this the easier it will be for them to begin taking their world into their own hands.
Also, while that may have been the method for some, you can create charcoal with nothing but a thin iron pot and some fire. You don't even have to make much of it. 5 silver pieces. Say it with me. A single piece of charcoal in Pathfinder of negligible weight is 5 silver pieces. 20 pounds of wood is 1 copper piece. A single piece of charcoal is less than 1/10th of a pound, which means if in 20 lbs. of wood you only made a single piece of charcoal for writing then you just made in excess of a 50,000% profit margin. :P
I skipped most of the posts to answer your question, with apologies to Ashiel.
I would use this as an opportunity for RP and not worry about the actual amounts. Most villagers lived on the edge of starvation and share croppers by todays standards.
If this is the 6th child, chances are you got the dregs. Play at as such. Maybe its a net loss but said noble has charge from Dear Ole Dad to Do Right and Make It Work. Show me the stuff you are made of. . . .
Now in terms of what the village can offer, they offer labor, enough victuals to eat, peeps to plant gardens and daffodils . . . .you get the idea.
There is always a village priest of some sort. There is always a Head Man.
A lot of nobles in Europe went on Crusade to get rich. The nobles stayed for new lands and the knights wanted loot they could sell back home.
So, create an interesting village with problems and have the new Lord fix it. You could design a whole campaign over this . . .
werewolves in the country side . . . its actually a hyena(don) true story
vampire who is sad over the poor condition of the village and his/her descendants. An evil monster in league with a pack of naive good children. Intahrestink!
a feud between families ala the capulets and the montagues
the perienial plauge
a cheating drunk church deacon who needs replacing, but he is the cousin of the Bishop.
a few bad harvests and you have to buy food at an elevated level to feed everyone.
one of the kids has sorcerous powers and the village wants to burn him
one of girls in the village is Joan of Arc (eek!) and is having visions
married? no? meet my daughter! yes? meet my wife!
catacombs under the manor house . . . maybe your folk, maybe someone else's Maybe both and they are having a food fight with you in the middle.
gotta have a ghost! what decent manor house does NOT have ghost?
For those interested a Good book on this is life in a Medieval village. It goes into the Day to Day life of peasants.
It should be pointed out Medieval peasant tended to pay taxes in goods and services not money as coins where (Unlike fantasy games) scarce.
a peasant could pay his taxes by working on his Lords land , by providing military service or in wheat and livestock.
Remember if you call the peasants out to fight the Orc raiders , they will deduct it from the taxes owed .
Also even low level Magic is going to improve the lot of everyone.
For example many woman bleed to death during childbirth during the Middle ages. But now if the village has a first level adept with the stabilize 0 level spell that number is going to drop way down
Let me help:
I did this a while back. In case you want to know what the rules provide as they are currently set up.
just enough to pay me his taxes! Pfft seriously! The idea of peasants having money! Preposterous!
hey, you gunna eat that girl? the one screamin'?
cheese it the vamp is here!
and whats that funny looking dog? ahhhhhhhhhh!
I cannot stress enough that D&D/Pathfinder is not our world in Medieval times. The game has a nice dial-effect due to the way it works out. You want your peasants to be pitiful near destitute individuals? Tax the hell out of them. Lady Laurel Oakmoon not making enough dank? Raise the taxes. What was 5 gp / citizen is now 15 gp / citizen (cost of living in this place just kicked up to 20 gp/month for an average living). Suddenly peasants aren't banking any coin and are just getting bye each month. If something bad happens (maybe bad weather inflicts a penalty on Profession checks this year) and they all shift down to Poor lifestyle.
Don't fight the system, wield it. But remember that things need to make sense within the world. If the villagers are bad off enough they will seek greener pastures elsewhere (unless you also create laws forbidding people from traveling akin to those that led to the Freemason name) and it makes it bizarre when it comes to trading valuable goods, and more bizarre when a village is posting bounties of 10 gp per slain goblin or something when everyone's too damn poor to feed themselves. :P
It gets really boring fast when every town you go to has lots of peasants who are under the iron fisted rule of their local tyrannical lord who is taxing the heart and soul out of them. Instead it's way more interesting to have such things be bullet points in the scenery, and having fun things like festivals and such as backdrops for adventures.
Either way, these guidelines can be useful. I use them in my own campaigns with great, great success.
I've been building up some economics rules based on the GMG, Kingmaker rules and several third party books. Overall I liked the Kingmaker rules apart from the magic item economy.
My starting point is that sans market modifiers the cost of living presented in the GMG should be the amount a 1st level commoner makes. A labourer working the fields would earn 3GP and a craftsman would earn 10GP.
My second baseline is taken from the resource section of Mongoose Publishing's Strongholds and Dynasties book. Basically each product starts off as a raw material (e.g iron ore), is processed (e.g. iron ingots) and then crafted (e.g. swords and armour).
So a labourer is able to harvest/mine/etc and sell 3GP of raw material a month. A craftsman is able to earn 10GP+raw material cost per month. According to the craft skill 1/3 of the costs is the [processed] raw materials, which would be 5GP and 15GP worth of crafted items produced every month.
Now looking at both ends of the scale the person doing the processing buys the raw material at 3GP and sells it for 5GP, which would mean they only make 2GP a month. I adjusted 2GP to be 3GP so that the income was the same as the labourer. This would now mean that the processed raw materials cost for crafted goods would be 6GP instead of 5GP.
The 5GP to 6GP disparity is easily solved by having the extra 1GP considered the average wasted material as a result of a failed craft check. The craftsman sells the wastage on and actually sells a base of 16GP worth of items every month, from which they make an income of 10GP a month.
As another baseline, master craftsmen, who live a wealthy lifestyle should earn an average of 100GP per month and they produce fine items. Normally these characters would be well beyond 1st level. But the concept could be extended to say some craftsmen, e.g. armoursmiths earn more than the base 10GP per month but less than 100GP. This could be used to explain the disparity between craft DCs and item cost. I.e break away from the 1/3 being raw material rule or change the DC to indicate the extra time and skill required.
But back to the original question. A peasant farmer should earn 3GP per month.
But back to the original question. A peasant farmer should earn 3GP per month.
Except that he just takes 10 and earns at minimum (-5 ability modifier) 10 gp / month.
But back to the original question. A peasant farmer should earn 3GP per month.Except that he just takes 10 and earns at minimum (-5 ability modifier) 10 gp / month.
It's obvious the game mechanics are wildly inconsistent in this area and are such a minor part of most PCs game that's it's not worth officially fixing. So any attempt to homebrew fix them is going to break one or more of the existing RAW. In my case I've decided to fix on the cost of living expenses and reverse engineer craft to fit.
With regard to the profession skill, I tend to use that as an extra pool of skill points to be used against a primary skill when performing that profession. E.g. an armoursmith will add it to their craft score when making armour or to their appraise score when valuing an item.
It's obvious the game mechanics are wildly inconsistent in this area and are such a minor part of most PCs game that's it's not worth officially fixing. So any attempt to homebrew fix them is going to break one or more of the existing RAW. In my case I've decided to fix on the cost of living expenses and reverse engineer craft to fit.But back to the original question. A peasant farmer should earn 3GP per month.Except that he just takes 10 and earns at minimum (-5 ability modifier) 10 gp / month.
Um... it doesn't need fixed, read the link I provided, the system works just fine.
In the real middle ages the answer is next to nothing. A peasant would pay his lord in kind(goods) and with days of yearly required service. They belonged to the land and had limited opportunity to better their station(unless they had special skills). The duties they owed their lord were generally high. After them they rarely had enough left to do anything but feed their families and barter for other necessaries. The nobles would sell the goods they received at regional markets for money. Not saying you have to follow close to historical practice as this is a fantasy game but its a good place to start.
@Ashiel- lgp while a pittance to an adventure is a hell of a lot of money to a commoner(at least if you want to follow something approaching a real world comparison). I would wager most farmers have never seen a gold piece and never had more then a few silver to their name. If they did it was immediately spent.
Actually for peasants most of their obligations was paid in "kine". A portion of their crops and/or subject to being called to service as peasant conscripts in the lords wars. He couldn't afford to lose too many of such troops in war... with no peasants to work the land, a lord would lose his economic base.
You have to remember that there is a major difference between Adventuring economies and that of the common peasantry.
That's almost exactly what I said.
Um... it doesn't need fixed, read the link I provided, the system works just fine.It's obvious the game mechanics are wildly inconsistent in this area and are such a minor part of most PCs game that's it's not worth officially fixing. So any attempt to homebrew fix them is going to break one or more of the existing RAW. In my case I've decided to fix on the cost of living expenses and reverse engineer craft to fit.But back to the original question. A peasant farmer should earn 3GP per month.Except that he just takes 10 and earns at minimum (-5 ability modifier) 10 gp / month.
I did thank you and it was insightful, but it had made several assumptions that don't sit well with the mechanics I decided to use.
Um... it doesn't need fixed, read the link I provided, the system works just fine.It's obvious the game mechanics are wildly inconsistent in this area and are such a minor part of most PCs game that's it's not worth officially fixing. So any attempt to homebrew fix them is going to break one or more of the existing RAW. In my case I've decided to fix on the cost of living expenses and reverse engineer craft to fit.But back to the original question. A peasant farmer should earn 3GP per month.Except that he just takes 10 and earns at minimum (-5 ability modifier) 10 gp / month.I did thank you and it was insightful, but it had made several assumptions that don't sit well with the mechanics I decided to use.
Just because the mechanics you decided to use didn't fit with the ones presented does not make the default rules wildly inconsistent. What it actually does is prove the default rules are consistent and that your rules are wildly inconsistent with the standard. Because the standard works and works for a wide variety of possible social structures (from affluent peasants to "save us Robin Hood" peasants).
@Ashiel: Just because all paladins are lawful good does not mean all lawful good characters are paladins. There have been, many, many threads on how broken crafting rules and the ilk are.
Abraham's rules start with the assumption that farmers are 2nd level characters or higher and live an average lifestyle. He also assumes magic items are lying around the place. None of those assumptions sit well with my view of the gameworld and in particular the idea of the affluent peasant seems contradictory. An affluent free-man yes, but not a peasant. I could easily see a levelled commoner having a better lifestyle than a peasant - perhaps a minor landowner who owns his own farmland; which would be roughly equivalent to a modern day farmer.
They don't sit well with your world, but they do sit well with the standard one. Obviously if you plan on running a world the system wasn't built to model you'll need house rules. :P
Again I say. One is consistent within the rules of the game and can be "dialed" to taste. Another is arbitrary and inconsistent with the rules cut and pasted from a menagerie of other material. It seems bizarre - nonsensical even - to choose the latter over the former.
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So... 120 gp a year "free and clear". Keeping in mind that this does not take into account any festivals, revelry, or other luxuries (like cheese instead of gruel and stale bread). Any time they travel to a town, it costs a GP to get in and out (fees for peasants are levied seperate than adventurers/dangerous looking folk). Also, if the farmer is trying to feed cows, you have to add that to the number of mouths they feed. so 1 cow = 60 gp a year to feed, etc... but gives the farmer the afformentioned luxury of cheese and milk. As well as not needing to hand plow the entire field (though that would probably ruin a dairy cow).