5e gp/usd exchange rate

>How much is good wine in usd?
$5

UNTRAINED laborers make 1 sp per day.

Different things were expensive in the middle ages. A candle that burns for ten minutes took about one whole day of labor for a peasant, for example. Or think about the amount of effort in growing an acre of hemp, harvesting it, drying it, drawing it into threads, and weaving it into a rope. If you try to think of things in terms of modern-day dollars, you'll get totally out of whack, because industrialization has removed a lot of the labor involved in producing the goods.

Gygax came up with the pricing back in 1e days based mainly on the idea that a laborer makes about one silver piece a day, and extrapolated from there. He was a giant geek about the middle ages, but he was just one geek with a library card in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. They're okay, usable, but not perfect. Still a lot better than extrapolating from modern-day prices.

If your DM has problems remembering the prices of goods in the PHB, just print out a copy of those tables and keep them on hand. Or put a little flag in your PHB.

I'm asking this crap because I really need to understand the value of money for my game rp.
Otherwise I wouldn't care. See, my guy like this npc who is living in poor conditions. He wants to help them but needs to go carefull about it. It would be awkward just to give money like the other guy in the thread. 40k to a stranger - nobody does that. So, maybe I can help them to start up a business or something. It's really money sensitive as our party only has 275gp among 6 players

Remember that it's a completely different economy, based on completely different needs. Horses in the real world can be thousands of dollars, because they're luxury items that don't have a real market. Horses in a fantasy world where equine-based travel is prevalent would probably only be the equivalent of a hundred dollars or so. Then you have to remember that pay is different, too. The basis of peasants getting 1sp per day is like the guy at McDonalds getting minimum wage and only 20 hours per week.

Basically what I'm saying is that the DM is completely justified in pulling prices quite literally out of his asshole until you can show an economic model that accounts for dragons.

before the cotton gin was invented, a person would only have about 1 set of clothing due to how expensive textiles were

>Horses in the real world can be thousands of dollars, because they're luxury items that don't have a real market.

Maybe in your North American urban world. Plenty of people around the world—and even within the United States and Canada!—use horses as work animals today.

>Horses in a fantasy world where equine-based travel is prevalent would probably only be the equivalent of a hundred dollars or so.

Increased demand lowers prices. Okay.

This. Don't try to convert their money to ours. It doesn't work that way.

>But he doesn't remember them well and doesn't want to reference the page all the time.
How difficult is it to copy the page with a scanner? Hell, if he downloads the PDF he can just print it normally. Or just write it down? Your DM needs to step up his game.

>Chess set is 1gp, horse is 75gp, spy glass however is 1000gp!
The chess set is probably made out of wood, so it'd be relatively cheap to make. The horse, however, takes years to 'make' and train to be used as a steed, so it costs much more. The spy glass is ludicrously expensive because it's much more difficult to make and there's no market for it in your generic medieval fantasy setting that hasn't hit the age of sail yet.

Correct me if I'm wrong on any of the above. I'm no expert.

How about this for a riddle. Why doesn't everyone becomes a wizard or something in that world. I mean so much shit could be solved just by magic. Adventurers seem to be almost godlike compared to pesants. One could probably notice such inequality and try to do something about it. Such a huge wealth gap in dnd that it baffles me.

Yep, another reason that it's crazy to base D&D prices on a modern model. Most D&D settings don't have Chinese sweatshop workers, cotton harvested by million-dollar stripper harvesters, Bangladeshi spinning mills, or a vast system of international shipping based on subsidized petroleum that makes the whole system work. Your D&D character could not get the equivalent of a $10-20 t-shirt.

Why doesn't everyone in the US become a banker? I mean so much shit could be solved just by financial tricks. Financial analysts seem to be almost godlike compared to retail workers. One could probably notice such inequality and try to do something about it. Such a huge wealth gap in America that it baffles me.

90% of wizards can only cast prestidigitation or magic missile, being a wizard is like being a doctor, only a very small fraction of people are smart enough to do it, and of those not all f those apply themselves hard enough to get even a single class level

asking why there arent more wizards is like asking why there arent more astrophysicists, who are literally one-in-a-million IRL

it wasnt for a lack of trying that they cant cast meteor swarm

And I will never forget how I imagined it.

By most standards, untrained labourers would do the same tasks as most minimum wage workers. Actually, they'd do tasks that we now pay much more for, actual manual labour.

>Increased demand lowers prices. Okay.
Take your head out of your ass and stop trying to sound smarter by being a cunt. Unless you're implying that such a world would have absolutely no increase in supply compared to ours.

My statement on dragon and magic missile based economics still stands, though.

Yeah.. Suddenly it all becomes clear. I'll talk to my dm about keeping some prices fixed so I can do my hustling in town down to a t. I'll probably just lost him all the items alphabetically.
He's not lazy. It's me Who wants too much out of him. After all constantly checking prices slows down game and does nothing for development. I understand why he makes them up and tries to speed up the process.

Have you tried buying things in between sessions? It would prevent shopping time from cutting into play time.

Just talk to him out of character when he brings up a price that sounds weird. It will give him a chance to either justify it through world-building or correct his ad hoc mistake.

There appear to be many more horses in the US now than in the 1850s.

answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=144565

Is this really so important to you?

You start trying to implying game mechanics to the real world and then long time implications the setting falls apart.

But the Wizard things is easily explained, only a small number of people have the ability and knowledge to become wizards. It takes years of study to become a level one. You would typically need a teacher and few wizards have the time or inclination to teach their secrets.

We are 6 and we couldn't be much different from each other. We travel a lot and whenever we're in a city dm gives us each rp time to do our business. I delved in into economics trying to micromanage our income and also help some npcs. If I didn't I wouldn't care otherwise whether stay at an inn is 1sp or 1gp.
Have you ever played with dm or a player who was too much into details? Like actually calculating carying capacity and times we eat, hours we sleep? Is it just too much?
I guess for the most part rules are more of a guideline. They are there so the players won't abuse the system and up to DM whether to in force them or not.

Closer to 10 or 20

Yeah. That's a solid advise. Thanks.
Not that much. I remember the first time I asked myself a question how much is it in real money was when we needed to go through a path and there were some bandits collecting a road fee. 10gp! Our party want to pay so they killed them all and some of us almost died. Thats when I asked myself how much is 10gp in work labour and what can I afford for it? Was it really worth killing 9 people over? Was it earth risking your own life?

They didn't want to pay. 10gp each for 6ppl. We had 200 at that time. So... How much is a life worth?

I usually make a Gold Equivalent to roughly 10 dollars.

About tree fiddy.

A longsword in D&D costs 15 gp. A real-life, decent-quality longsword will run you about $150 USD, or at least it would have back in 2000 or so when 3rd Edition came out.

Therefore, in 2000s USD:
1 pp = $100
1 gp = $10
1 ep = $5
1 sp = $1
1 cp = 10¢

Therefore, as an example of prices from my handy-dandy 5th Edition PHB:

- Mug of ale: 40¢
- Loaf of bread: 20¢
- Hunk of cheese: $1
- Modest inn stay (per day): $5
- Modest meals (per day): $3
- Common wine (pitcher): $2
- Fine wine (bottle): $100
- Sack: 10¢
- Iron pot: $20
- Bucket: 50¢
- Backpack: $20
- Hammer: $10
- Bagpipes: $300
- Warhorse: $4,000
- Rowboat: $500

These prices might generally seem to be low or strange, but remember that a typical D&D nation is below third world level in modern terms. You should think of prices in terms of what things would have cost to a person in, say, the 1500s, rather than in today's terms.

50 gp weighs one pound (or did back in 3e, anyway), so gold coins weigh 0.32 oz each. 0.32 oz is ~0.29 troy oz.
The current spot price of gold is about $1300/oz, so 1 gp is about $380.

It would be worth its weight in gold, because it's not accepted form of currency.

10gp weighs a pound
a pound of gold is worth $19,103.73
one gold piece is worth $1,910.37

if its plentiful and easy to acquire then it wouldn't be wrth a crazy amount in terms of cost:goods

Compare the current US dollar to the US gold dollar of 1900, admittedly more than 300 years after the latest traditional D&D setting, but whatever.

The current US dollar is worth 5 cents of the gold dollar, and that was
> twenty-five and eight-tenths grains (1.67 g) of gold nine-tenths fine

nani

Going off the 2sp/2gp daily wage for laborers, and assuming the year in your world is 365 days less a few days for holidays (call it an even 350):

An unskilled laborer makes 70 gp a year and a skilled laborer makes 700.

In modern USD terminology that would equate to someone making ten times as much as the minimum wage -- which is demonstrably not the case. (In fact, if you go by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' data on average hourly wages, a skilled laborer makes about $20 an hour no matter what he does.)

This is of course not a fair value to make a comparison with. Laborers worked from sunup to sundown before the advent of labor laws, so they work about 50% more to make the money that someone today works only eight hours a day to receive. If we adjust the modern skilled laborer's wage by 150% to compensate, that's a $30/hr wage for $240 a day.

And the "unskilled" example without the benefit of a minimum wage would be making ten times less, $3/hr or $24 a day.

This is your long answer OP, worth the read. You'll find some interesting information, like pork being the most efficient meat compared to chicken and beef.

>Indulging a baby on the internet
PHB Page 143 gives you the weight of a coin.

Google "Gold to USD" and a converter will pop up.

Use the current exchange rate to tell you the value of your coins in USDs.

>We made a thread for this...

>implying the value of gold is stable between universes

To quote the 5e PHb on equipment,
" A skilled (but not exceptional) artisan can earn one gold piece a day (...) A silver piece buys a laborer's work for a day"

However, one cannot assume that every peasant one runs into is a laborer earning 1 sp a day.
Consider the Lifestyle Expenses, also in the Equipment section of the 5e PHb. On 1 sp per day, one can only afford a Wretched or Squalid lifestyle. A Wretched lifestyle is described as "inhumane conditions." As for a Squalid lifestyle, "Most people at this lifestyle level have suffered some terrible setback. They might be disturbed, marked as exiles, or suffer from disease."

"Laborer" is a more polite way of saying urchins off the street, the poverty stricken, and those who must be willing to do anything for a dollar. Unless something has gone horribly wrong in your setting, 1 sp per day should not be the average income.

(Cont.)

So, if 1 sp/day isn't the average income, what is?
Fortunately, the Between Adventures section of the 5e PHb provides some guidelines.

Practicing a Profession seems to be what a skilled (but not exceptional) artisan does, given that it allows for a 1 gp lifestyle without costing additional money, i.e. it pays 1 gp per day. Joining an organisation and getting gainful employment, however, provides the equivalent of 2 gp per day.
Interestingly, learning how to play an instrument and Performing as a profession pays the equivalent of 4 gp per day. This is notable because in 3.5e, someone playing an instrument at an equivalent skill level to a skilled (but not exceptional) artisan makes an average of 5 cp per day.

A craftsman, on the other hand, produces up to 5 gp worth of items a day, at the cost of half that value in gp per day, a net gain of 2.5 gp.
In addition, a craftsman earns the equivalent of 1 gp per day in saved lifestyle expenses, bringing their total income per day up to 3.5 gp per day.

Of course, there are yet more downtime activities in the DMG, but from these it can generally be assumed that 1 gp is about a day's wages for the "average" citizen.

(Cont.)

But what about those DMG downtime activities?

Carousing is strange. It lasts an arbitrary period of time, and each day during that arbitrary period of time costs 4 gp. At the end of this period, however, there's a random chance of something happening.
Let's assign a flat -4 gp per day no matter what, then let's assume our hypothetical carouser defines their arbitrary period of time as one day, and let's further assume that this hypothetical carouser is level one, and let's yet further assume that whirlwind romances and making enemies of people has no additional effect on our hypothetical carouser's wallet.
In addition, let's say that staying in jail pays out 4 gp per day to balance out the flat -4 gp per day such a lifestyle costs by default.
On average, our carouser makes 14.35 gp per day, mostly due to the 11% per day chance of making a small fortune gambling. This description is also useful, because it means that 40 gp is the smallest sum that can be considered a "small fortune."

What about running a business? Let's assume our business is a Shop, for simplicities sake. Furthermore, we can run our shop for an arbitrary period of time, up to 30 days at a time. Payments happen every arbitrary period of time when they do happen, but a spaller arbitrary period means it's more likely one will incurr a debt.
It turns out that with an arbitrary period of 30 days, the shop produces an average of about 36 gp each month, or 1.2 gp per day, while with an arbitrary period of 1 day, it produces about 16.2 gp per day. These estimates do, of course, completely ignore the cumulative -10 penalty to the roll for each unpaid debt.

Magic item creation is trash as a profession. It's almost always better to just make mundane items as a craftsman. That about wraps up DMG downtime activities.

In summary, it can generally be assumed that an average individual makes a bit over 1 gp per day, and anything more than 40 gp is considered a small fortune.

1 GP is the earnings of a skilled worker for a single day. 1 GP can buy you 50 feet of hempen rope, or a goat. You can survive (food/water/boarding) for about a week on 1 GP.
Translating directly into USD, it'd be about $100~150. This is consistent with the price of weapons, as a properly made battle-forged sword may very well run you $1500 back in the day before cheap and streamlined forging techniques.
Most items are generally balanced to this range, though there's some freak exceptions (Telescope for 1000 GP? what in the fuck).

>(Telescope for 1000 GP? what in the fuck)
I'd like to see you produce multible hand ground lenses of optical quality using medieval methods.

It's futile to find a real-world analogy for everything that can be bought, so the point of pinning a dollar figure is to give the players some estimation of how much they should value the gold they get. For example, you go out drinking with your friends and order a beer at a bar, if they charged you $100 you'd be upset. But adventurers might drop a gold or a silver or a copper for any knicknack they need because the player doesn't know the relative value.
You can just say "A gold is worth $100", and then suddenly the PCs know they shouldn't flip a gold piece to someone just for helping them out with directions. They might give someone a silver (~$10) for common tchotkes. Later on then the players spend hundreds of gold for magic items, they are the equivalent of superstar mercenary assassins that charge $250,000 for a hit.

That depends on what your dragons and magic missiles are being used for. If dragons are being used to ferry goods in order to earn their hordes of gold, they can very well emulate air cargo in that regard, which is likewise offset by "evil" dragons acting as one-beast bandit hordes and basically commiting robbery using those some abilities.

Magic Missile's effects would likewise be determined on avalibilty; do we have wizard workhouses cranking out wands of MM to supply the King's armies?

Irrespective of how difficult it is, 1000 GP is enough to live on for 20 years for the average person.

Keep in mind your average D&D world has more gold that the entire real world earth.

Also isn't gold hella soft? It's prob a gold coating on like nickel or zinc or something.

Best currency by far.

Presumably a similar reason to why everyone doesn't become a neurosurgeon or aerospace engineer.

>OP specifically says 5e
>let's use 3.5
Ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment: Veeky Forums!

To be fair, the value of the gold piece doesn't change much between editions, at least when talking about mundane equipment.
In particular, the 1 sp per day for laborers thing has been around for a while.

"Good" wine is incredibly fucking suggestive. A horse actually might be a better choice, since there hasn't been all that much change in how they're produced. A typical horse (that is, excluding racehorses and those of special breeding) will generally be between two and four thousand dollars. If we take the middle, that means each thousand is worth 25gp, or one gold is $40. Interestingly, this lines up more or less with actual gold prices, if we suppose that a D&D gold coin is about the size of a nickel.

You have low standards for wine. A spyglass should be expensive as fuck though, they're artisinally made by someone with a lot of training and skill.

>A candle that burns for ten minutes took about one whole day of labor for a peasant, for example
If he only made one, but you can make a fuckton at once.

>but he was just one geek with a library card in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. They're okay, usable, but not perfect. Still a lot better than extrapolating from modern-day prices.
If you want one by a professor, here's this:
luminarium.org/medlit/medprice.htm

If you want something in the Carolingean system (the one D&D uses) that's been compiled by more nerds with more resources, check the Song of Swords general, their autism is unmatched in many regards.

"Thousands of dollars" is well within the "work animal" range. It's an order of magnitude cheaper than a tractor.

Astrophysicists don't make much money though, considering the educational investment necessary.

One person is using the most recent data. One person is using the oldest possible data. Both of them result in a gold coin that is a giant fuck-off fantasy super-dubloon, as opposed to a coin of the size that people actually used in real life. A dubloon was the biggest that saw widespread historical use, and would be under $280 at modern gold prices. The doubloon is called that because it's worth double the escudo, already a large coin by non-Spanish standards.

Most gold we use is an alloy (not a coating, but same kind of idea).

The price lists in D&D have always been mainly a game abstraction; it's more about making a plate armor unreachable to the level one fighter than it is about simulating any kind of real economy. Don't look too closely.

A preindustrial serf or peasant might not even handle money, beyond perhaps a few copper pieces or a bit of gold stashed away for an emergency.

>Increased demand lowers prices.
It can, if suppliers compete to meet that demand.

A computer in 1956 was rather more expensive than your shitposting machine, even though only a handful of powerful corporations and governments could find a use for one.

>complaining about how easy to answer a question is
>failing to answer it adequately
For every problem, there is a solution that it simple, obvious, and wrong.

I think I'll just go with 1gp-$100, sp-$10 and cp-$1. It could be done. Surely some of the prices feel too low or too high sometimes but for the most part it seems legit.

From Urban Arcana for d20 Modern.

By that scale, a gold coin is roughly the size of a dime, much smaller than the 50gp=1lb math.

Gold's hella heavy meng. 50 dime sized pieces made of gold would probably weigh around a pound.
Also what scale are you talking about

He might be thinking that 50 lbs do go would have to mean bigger coins.

A better way to look at it would be to ask 'what can be bought' with a certain amount of gold, then figure out what that translates to.

Take a look through the equipment section to get a better idea of how much the Samurai gave him.

Do the math, nigger.

I totally agree. I worked at an equine hospital for a few years, and have seen the amount of money people put into caring for their horses. They are not cheap now, and never have been.

Isn't that actually lighter than normal?
Usually it's ten dimes to a pound.

But it says in the 5e materials that 10gp = 1 lb

I personally go with a copper is 50 cent, silver is $5, and gold $50. But in truth, the econ is so different it just gives me a headache.

user, I'm not OP but this is glorious and you have my eternal thanks.

>ywn be able to piledrive and suplex enemies
Why even live?