This may seem trivial to some but it's bugged me for a long time. The prices in the Player's Handbook ever since 1e seem to be divorced from reality in many cases. I've had this issue come up a few time in campaigns I've run and I believe item prices in DnD are a big issue with many people based on the number of discussions I see on the issue at other forums. I realize the game is Dungeons & Dragons and not Accountants & Economists but it would be nice to see half-way realistic prices in 5e and that's why I'm posting this message.
The DnD price level doesn't bother me. If gold is scarce in a campaign world, gold will tend to be very valuable and the value of goods in gold will be relatively low. If, on the other hand, gold is quite common, prices will be higher in gold pieces. This seems to be the case in the core DnD rules as gold pieces are the standard currency while in Medieval Europe the silver piece was the coin used for day-to-day transactions. What concerns me is the huge difference in the relative value of DnD goods compared to relative prices in Medieval Europe.
The following relative price comparison of 3.5e prices with actual High and Late Medieval prices comes from various academic sources taken off the web. The majority of prices are from the 14th & 15th century, mostly in England. All historic prices are in silver pennies (denier) while the 3.5e prices are in gold pieces. I don't use the 4e books so if there have been radical changes to the price structure since 3.5e I apologize.
I use the price of a bushel of wheat as the basis to calculate relative prices. Note that I converted the value/lb. in the Player's Handbook to a per bushel value. I'd prefer to use the daily wage of a laborer for comparison purposes, but the 3.5e books don't seem to provide the DnD wage for common labor. Wheat is a basic commodity that nearly everyone would have consumed in some form in a world with Medieval technology so it makes sense to me to use wheat as the starting point. Historical wheat prices varied greatly from year-to-year but I'm using an average of nearly 200 years of data. All prices are expressed as a ratio to the wheat price and I then compare the 3.5e ratios to the historic ratios.
Item
Cost in 3.5e Gold Pieces
Source
3.5e Ratio to Wheat
Cost in English Denier
Source
Medieval Ratio to Wheat
Ratio: 3.5 D&D to Medieval
Salt (lb.)
5
(7)
8.33
0.11
(6)
0.01
57276%
Bucket
0.5
(7)
0.83
0.5
(3)
0.07
1271%
Full Plate
1,500
(7)
2,500
2,000
(4)
262.3
953%
Sheep
2
(7)
3.33
2.7
(1)
0.35
953%
Linen (yard)
4
(7)
6.67
5.84
(6)
0.77
870%
Bottle
2
(7)
3.33
4
(3)
0.52
635%
House, Grand
5,000
(8)
8,333
11,880
(3)
1,558
535%
Iron (lb.)
0.5
(7)
0.83
1.38
(6)
0.18
461%
House, Simple
1,000
(8)
1,667
3,000
(3)
393
424%
Chest
2
(7)
3.33
6
(3)
0.79
424%
Dagger
2
(7)
3.33
6
(3)
0.79
424%
Inn, Common
0.5
(7)
0.83
1.5
(3)
0.20
424%
Cart
15
(7)
25.00
48
(3)
6.29
397%
Ale (gal.)
0.2
(7)
0.33
1
(2)
0.13
254%
Chicken
0.1
(7)
0.17
0.5
(4)
0.07
254%
Leather Armor
10
(7)
16.67
60
(3)
7.87
212%
Ginger (lb.)
2
(7)
3.33
12
(5)
1.57
212%
Pepper (lb.)
2
(7)
3.33
18.028
(5)
2.36
141%
Pig
3
(7)
5.00
30
(3)
3.93
127%
Ox
15
(7)
25.00
157
(1)
20.59
121%
Saffron (lb.)
15
(7)
25.00
182.857
(5)
23.98
104%
Wheat (bu.)
0.6
(7)
1.00
7.63
(6)
1.00
100%
Silk (yard)
10
(7)
16.67
132
(5)
17.31
96%
Canvas (yard)
0.1
(7)
0.17
2
(5)
0.26
64%
Cinnamon (lb.)
1
(7)
1.67
24.151
(5)
3.17
53%
War Horse, Heavy
400
(7)
667
19,200
(3)
2,518
26%
Oil (pint)
0.1
(7)
0.17
9.96
(6)
1.31
13%
Sources:
1 J.J. Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life in the XIVth Century, Putnam's Sons, 1931
2 A.R. Myers, London in the Age of Chaucer, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1972
3 Dyer, Christopher, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages, Cambridge University press, 1989
4 V.B. Norman and Don Pottinger, English Weapons & Warfare 449-1660, Barnes & Noble, 1992
5 Munro, John, The Luxury Trades of the Silk Road: How Much Did Silks and Spcies Really Cost?, 1983
6 Clark, Greg, The Price History of English Agriculture, Research in Economic History, 2003
7 Players Handbook 3.5e
8 Dungeon Masters Guide II, 3.5e
Some of my observations:
1) Nearly every 3.5e item with the exception of warhorses and lamp oil seems overvalued compared to wheat prices. Note that if houses are so valuable, many farm laborers would rush into the building trades which should reduce the cost of housing and increase the cost of agricultural products. Historically, semi-skilled building laborers made only slightly more than farmhands which is probably one reason housing costs were moderate in the Middle Ages.
2) Most historical prices I've seen for plate armor are for extremely elaborate armor crafted for nobility in the Late Middle Ages or early Renaissance period. Typical plate armor worn by run-of-the-mill knights would have been much less expensive. For example, a suit of gilted armor crafted for the Prince of Wales in 1614 cost 340L while a set of off-the-shelf Milanese armor cost 8L 6s 8d in 1441 or only about 2.5% of the cost of the fancy pants armor.
3) The prices of most luxury goods appear to be in line with historic prices. The prices of luxury items is somewhat arbitrary anyway since their value is based more on their scarcity than anything else. If pepper and saffron happen grow in the kingdom your campaign is based in they could be quite common and worth much less than in Medieval Europe.
4) Why are sheep so expensive? Are Scotsmen taking them as consorts?
It's actually not as bad as I'd expect. It's certainly well within the realm of possibility, with all of the variables considered. The main differences seem to be in the prices of salt and, of course, wheat.
This has never really bugged me, though I noticed some of the discrepancies, especially salt, since it's pretty easily accessable, by evaporating seawater. But really, I never used D&D as a Medieval-simulator-with-magic. D&D, to me, simulates fantasy settings, and most fantasy settings are medieval based, but to me, if sheep are expensive, maybe they're rare because the Owlbears find them to be a tasty snack. Maybe plate armor is so expensive because the techniques to smith it is less well known in the setting, so finding someone who knows how to make a set of plate armor. Maybe the whole supply and demand curves are thrown out of wack, because divine magics of harvest gods have granted blessings of good Harvests, which make the price of grain, per pound, much lower than historic numbers.
All I'm saying, is just as long as everything makes some sort of sense relative to other items (i.e. Leather armor shouldn't cost more than Full plate), and that nothing is so egregiously expensive that it makes the game not as fun (i.e. say some adventure relied on the heroes buying a house, and they should be able to, logically, but they can't because it's more overpriced than it should be) I have no problem if the prices aren't "Historically accurate."
I tried to be historically accurate, once, with my money: 1 gold per 20 silver, 1 silver per 12 copper, like the English Pound-Shilling-Penny and the French franc-sol-denier, and frankly most other currencies of the time. Turns out players don't like it. They, like residents of modern nations, like Decimalized currencies.
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D&D makes a lot of concession to modern sensibilities and expectations. Thus the odd lack of sexism or human-on-human racism in D&D, for instance. Today, in the developed world, housing is very expensive, and cloth has been churned out by mills for many generations, so modern gamers would be a little wierded out to find that land (there's unclaimed wilderness all over the place) and houses (it's just wattle and daub) are 'cheap,' but canvas is a tad expensive. It's not that it couldn't be explained, it's just that it's not worth the effort to set everyone straight on medieval history and economics in a fantasy world that's otherwise a bit more like the modern world than it should be, to make it familiar. Really, D&D can stray into Flintstones territory, where you catch the game on your magic mirror and tool around on your flying carpet.
Since D&D does not take place in the real world, or anything remotely resembling it, the very concept of 'historical accuracy' is laughable at best.
I have DMed campaigns set in Middle Kingdom Egypt, Musketeers in France, and the Golden Age of Piracy. I am currently putting together background for a campaign set in Dark Ages England. Albeit all were with magic and monsters. Real world history is as strong an influence on any game I DM as anything fantasy related, certainly moreso than any of those Appendix N books that I've never had the inclination to read.
I am certainly not alone in using real world historical inspiration. Nothing laughable at throwing me a few bones for my style of play.
The problem isn't so much the price relative to other units, but how woefully inconsistent D&D is with itself. As a general rule, economies work in a sort of equilbirum, unless there's a truly game-changing effect in place. The big constant is man-hours.
The amount that unskilled labor will get paid will be constant in an area, otherwise your unskilled labor will quickly all trend towards one job. You can't expect being a woodcutter (hard labor, but easy to train) to pay five times being a farmhand (similar), otherwise all the farmhands would dash out to be woodcutters and the price of a woodcutter would fall.
You could make the argument that a soldier should be paid more than a woodcutter because of the risk of loss of life, or that a blacksmith should be paid more than a fletcher (requires hotter, harder work) but basically the economy has to make some degree of sense.
What's the difficultly in making a wagon? What's the difficulty in mining ore?
Now, if there are some unusual things at work, that's fine. Maybe houses cost so much because it's a points-of-light setting, and land is valuable. Sure, land out in the wild is cheap, but who wants to live there? Still, if those assumptions are in place, they have to be started! Likewise, maybe a dagger is so expensive because iron is rare. This is also an assumption which can be stated.
Nobody flips out about the economy of, say, Athas, because Athas has some very different, clearly stated assumptions. But what are the assumptions in D&D? A pre-industrial, agrigarian society which has magic. Does magic play a part in everyday life? Probably not. Therefore, when you want to make a wagon wheel, you probably have to go through the steps not unlike a point in human history. Therefore, the prices should more or less line up with the existing history, except where the assumptions diverge.
This is an area where a few days of research could go a long way.
Of course, this is all a moot point in a game which still tries to keep chain and plate armor as viable contemporaries. (Perhaps if they clarified that the chain was closer to the ultra light weight Japanese style instead of the denser european style... but I digress.) A little bit of explanation, just enough to retroactively justify the design choices, would go a long way to making the game make sense.
Undoubtably there will be people who don't care, they just check the tables of prices and move on. "Oh look, parchement is a copper a page, that's not bad." But for people who are thinking that's way too cheap, make a note that advances in alchemy by busy wizards with a neverending need for spell scrolls have made parchment easier to mass produce. This isn't necessarily the best explanation, it's basically "because magic" but at least it's an explicit "because magic" which differentiates the world of D&D from ours.
Really, an entire chapter called "the economy" and "the day in the life of a commoner" would go a long way to helping DMs craft an interesting world. I mean, this is a world with spiders the size of lions and where orcs are a real and dangerous thing. Surely this affects the worlds in all sorts of interesting ways. Work something out!
