Quote Originally Posted by Nupo View Post
Interesting bit of fantasy there, but I guess this is a game set in a fantasy world. I wonder if the person that put that together has ever put together an actual family budget. There were a ton of expenses that were left out. That thread also makes a lot of bold assumptions, the biggest of which is assuming that if someone has skills, he or she will be able to make an appropriate amount of money relative to those skills. I know a lot of people with college degrees that are working at minimum wage jobs. I expect in any world, fantasy or not, similar situations would also exist.

I still say (even with some creative accounting) the average commoner would not have access to third level spells. Rich merchants, yes, the average commoner no.
It's mainly just a refutation of the standard assumed hireling costs - 1sp/day for an untrained hireling[1], 1sp/day for "poor" meals[2], and taxes/tithes of up to 20%[3] are three numbers that really shouldn't coexist.

That the DMG tries to justify it[4] somehow just calls attention to it and makes it worse, really.

The only way I can see to make everything go together is the good old AD&D 1E explanation:
Quote Originally Posted by 1E PHB p.35
Your character will most probably be adventuring in an area where money is plentiful. Think of the situation as similar to Alaskan boom towns during the gold rush days, when eggs sold for one dollar each and mining tools sold for $20, $50, and $100 or more! Costs in the adventuring area are distorted because of the law of supply and demand-the supply of coin is high, while supplies of equipment for adventurers are in great demand.
In other words, literal goldrush prices.

...In case you wonder, yes, the 1sp/day price is straight out of the 1E DMG - bearers and torchbearers cost that much. A "merchant's meal" is also 1sp, but that's not exactly what you're linkboy is getting (which is presumably cheap enough that your thousands-of-gold-pieces PCs don't need to know the prices - their rations are bought for 50sp a week!).

This is a case where the added detail just makes older ad-hoc prices look really weird.

[1] PHB p.132: "The amount shown is the typical daily wage for laborers, porters, cooks, maids, and other menial workers." (The DMG p.105 also includes barristers in this price class, and mercenaries and valets/lackeys both sit at 2sp/day - between trained and untrained price classes.)

[2] PHB p.131: "Poor meals might be composed of bread, baked turnips, onions, and water." (PHB p.129 gives bread as being 2cp/loaf - turnips and onions aren't even in the Arms & Equipment Guide, however.)

[3] DMG p.140: "Taxes paid to the queen, the emperor, or the local baroness might consume as much as one-fifth of a character’s wealth[.]" (The same page also gives tithes as being 10%, of course, but those are called out as optional except in tyrannic theocracies. 20% is also given as an upper limit on taxes.)

[4] DMG p.139:
The economic system in the D&D game is based on the silver piece (sp). A common laborer earns 1 sp a day. That’s just enough to allow his family to survive, assuming that this income is supplemented with food his family grows to eat, homemade clothing, and a reliance on self-sufficiency for most tasks (personal grooming, health, animal tending, and so on).