What kind of income would a Commoner be happy about?

[Incarnate]

In Forgotten Realms in 1354 DR which is pre-1st edition.
Exhange rates is something like this:
200 cp = 200 copper pieces
= 20 silver pieces
= 2 electrum pieces
= 1 gold piece
= 1/5 platinum piece

According to 1st edition material - Monthly Costs:
One months cost for a footman is around 1-2 gp depending on its type. This amount is based on all the associated expenditures which go with the position - salary or wage, uniform or clothing, housing, food, and sundry equipment used routinely by the hireling. Exception: The cost does not include arms and armor of soldiers, and these items must be furnished to mercenaries over and above other costs.

..so the actual wage is obviously lower than the cost, which you get when all the actual expenses have been deducted. So 0.5-1gp seems very likely.

What kind of income a commoner would be happy about depends on various factors, one of them being his/her vocation for starters, if working privately or being contracted, experience level, etc.

For instance a leatherworker who's provided with quarters and other necessities would cost around 30sp to have employed, where as a mason under the same conditions would cost around 3gp, a carpenter would cost around 2gp, but a limner would cost around 10gp. So as you can see the vocation matters a great deal. Again, once you deduct the actual expenses of one you'll have the wage. So if their cost is halved then you have fairly decent representation of what they could be earning. However if they're working privately then its a whole different matter, because then its the equivalent of running a business.

[Tsidkenu]

Rad-Icarus' Post:

The problem with above is the lack of 'silver and copper' pieces in game. For example you have to pay 1-10 'gp' for a torch in game.

Oh wouldn't it be cool of we considered a in game GP 1 CP? Then the numbers start to make soooo much more sense. Is it possible to change the display name from gold to copper or silver?

it would and wouldnt at the same time. i really doesnt "change" anything mechanically. its just a name after all, but it does do something to the "feeling" you get from it. ex. killing wormthrax (or whatever he is called) would give you 10 gp. 10??? that is the "dragon hoard"? 10 lousy gold that i have to now split with 4 other people. **shoulders droop in sadness**

it does make a lot of other things make sense though. the apples that cost 50 gold or something? those are FANCY apples.

Just the way the day to day mechanics of the game play out, how often do you journey into a dungeon or cavern with a group of adventurers cutting through hordes of trolls, goblins, mummies or ogres to slay a powerful Lich, or an Orc Chieftan, or some other eldritch monstrosity that will kill you on sight for like... a copper ring, a tanglefoot bag, and 37GP on a good day?

Only by foreknowledge and careful loot stash trajectory do many adventures end up being profitable. I'm not saying it's ideal or complaining, just stripping it down to it's basic premise.

Also, I think it makes me "feel" better to think of 1GP as 1 copper coin/1 dollar. I know it doesn't translate perfectly, but then taking it outside the familiar server setting we've all grown used to... 5000 gold coins for a sword? That's still a royal treasury...it still seems like a huge sum for an appropriately legendary item.

[Tsidkenu]

Just the way the day to day mechanics of the game play out, how often do you journey into a dungeon or cavern with a group of adventurers cutting through hordes of trolls, goblins, mummies or ogres to slay a powerful Lich, or an Orc Chieftan, or some other eldritch monstrosity that will kill you on sight for like... a copper ring, a tanglefoot bag, and 37GP on a good day?

it happens, but i would not call it a "good day". much closer to a bad day, but it does happen. 10gp from that dragon would happen everytime. ~20gp from snake queen. 25 from FGK. everytime. it just loses it's impact quite a bit, even if the mechanicals are all the same.

[Tsidkenu]

NegInfinity's Post:

Provided your PC is running a business or otherwise employing commoners/NPCs, what kind of monthly salary would a random commoner feel "luxurious"?

Is it 200, 500, 1 000?

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm

You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning about half your check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the craft’s daily tasks, how to supervise untrained helpers, and how to handle common problems. (Untrained laborers and assistants earn an average of 1 silver piece per day.)

Also, see:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/wealthAndMoney.htm [tr][td]Cost[/td] [td]Item[/td][/tr] [tr][td]1 cp[/td] [td]One pound of wheat[/td][/tr] [tr][td]2 cp[/td] [td]One pound of flour, or one chicken[/td][/tr] [tr][td]1 sp[/td] [td]One pound of iron[/td][/tr] [tr][td]5 sp[/td] [td]One pound of tobacco or copper[/td][/tr] [tr][td]1 gp[/td] [td]One pound of cinnamon, or one goat[/td][/tr] [tr][td]2 gp[/td] [td]One pound of ginger or pepper, or one sheep[/td][/tr] [tr][td]3 gp[/td] [td]One pig[/td][/tr] [tr][td]4 gp[/td] [td]One square yard of linen[/td][/tr] [tr][td]5 gp[/td] [td]One pound of salt or silver[/td][/tr] [tr][td]10 gp[/td] [td]One square yard of silk, or one cow[/td][/tr] [tr][td]15 gp[/td] [td]One pound of saffron or cloves, or one ox[/td][/tr] [tr][td]50 gp[/td] [td]One pound of gold[/td][/tr] [tr][td]500 gp[/td] [td]One pound of platinum[/td][/tr] Look at this table and think about drink prices on the server.

Basically, everybody on sword coast rips adventurers off and should be probably put to the sword.

[Tsidkenu]

An unexpected forum bug was cleaned out of this thread. I apologise for the edits but it was the only way I could salvage the contents.

As for you, Electric Mayhem...

Don't do that again!

[electric mayhem]

*hands up* Yep sorry!

Silly me for trying to quote something.
Also props to our forum mod team, this is one curly bug, and great work for jumping on it quickly and fixing it too.

[SoThereIWas]

Lol... A Laborer gets 1 silver a day, which is enough to afford a poor meal. How the hell can a laborer afford a place to sleep and to support a family? It's nuts.

The City of Baulders Gate needs a welcome sign that says

"welcome to the sword coast, where adding more additions to the family makes survival possible."

even then 90% or more of the population can't read so... there is that

[aaron22]

a few examples have already been given regarding the prices of simple things. to show the difference between that market and our market, let us look at the other extreme.

Szwentil is one of the richest people ever in forgotten realms.

http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Szwentil_Illeon

the first few lines should raise a few eyebrows..

"He was one of the six founders of the Six Coffers Market Priakos, owner of The Roaring Griffon, and was rumored to be worth over six million gold pieces. He was so wealthy that he was able to buy enough of anything to manufacture a shortage,....."

6 million gold is it? that was his TOTAL WORTH, not what he had on hand. on hand he would had only a fraction of it and would have needed to borrow against his "worth" possessions to get an actual 6 million on hand.

edit: he most likely never had 6 million gold at any given time ever. it is much more likely that he purchased things at a much lower worth and increased the value of said items over time until their worth greatly exceeded their actual cost.

our market is way outside of what is "FR norm."

[SoThereIWas]

For sure aaron22,

I'm simply stating that I would think that the common household in Forgotten Realms setting in my perspective would have generations living together under one roof together to survive.

----
I don't like using that wiki, but that's just preference.

I do like http://www.realmshelps.net/ tho
----

So I guess I might have got a bit sidetracked?

But I get your point that nwn2 is different than PnP as far as market and such.

[aaron22]

My only desire was not to rebuke any previous posts here, but to provide another angle to build the desire of the OPer . That perhaps we should not really use pnp to deliver our numbers but create something proportional to to it with our market in mind.

[Orehgretsky]

I imagine that farmers and other menial laborers receive payment in the form of food and clothing. So, if we suppose that gold is valued at 57.5 USD per gram in our world and that their gold coins weigh the same as a dollar coin, I think we move on from there. Consequently, one gold coin is worth $465. Assuming the lowest wage is 1600 USD a month after taxes, that would be equivalent to a week's worth of work in our time. Here in Sweden, a regular check stub that doesn't require any education or prior experience typically pays 16000 Swedish crowns after taxes, so that's what you typically earn.