Alright, extra-long and unnecessary post.
I'm working on an alternative simpler Stronghold system that takes less bookkeeping. While doing so, I've come up with a problem, or rather a questioning, while dealing with salaries.
According to the book, a farmer makes 5 copper a day. That's 225 copper a month (2.25 gold), 18.25 gold a year.
This seemed a bit high to me so I've searched around (more out of curiosity than anything else) and found a few interesting articles about the economy in the middle ages. Long story short, it's goddamn complex. The prices differ a lot so is wages depending if the country, if it was at war, during plagues, crusades, time period, economy, taxes, etc. I'm considering the Raven Lands are in bad times as it just exited a 300 years isolation that would've most likely crumbled the whole economy to a point physical money would not worth anything at all but I digress. I've tried working with gross averages and rounding up/down to avoid trying to make a memoir out of such a petty thing. Keep in mind I've not gone to overly long and deep research.
So, in the middle ages, a laborer earned between 1-2 penny/denier a day.
That's 30-60 penny (2.5-5 shillings) per month, about 1.5-3 pounds per year.
1 denier/penny afforded you one of:
- 1 gallon of poor ale
- 1 dozen eggs
- 2 chickens
So basically, it means that a peasant in hard times could afford 6 eggs and half a gallon of ale every day and not have anything else left. That's not even accounting taxes and tithe. Most texts seem to say they each asked about 10% but also state peasant had really hard time meeting ends and often had to sell properties or seeds to get by (selling the seeds you'd need to get by the next year is really not ideal).
Let's assume that most peasant produce their own food, they are left with 3 farthings (4 farthings = 1 penny) per day. Which means one would need to save for a week to be able to buy an axe (5 pence) or a pair of boots, 2 weeks to buy a sheep, and could only afford 2 "good" cows per year (whatever "good" means) or 1 or 2 draught horse.
Every freeman (landowner) was asked by law to own a gambeson, a helmet and a spear.
Prices on those are hard to find, but a "merchant's house armor" is worth 5 shillings, a "cheap peasant's sword" 6 pence and a morion (16-17th century Spanish "conquistador" iron helmet, the closest thing I could find to an open helm) 3.5 shillings. That's 9 shillings for the complete set. It's about 3 and a half months of savings, although one could probably find cheaper armor and helmet, let's say between 1-3 months of savings.
A set of plate cuirass with pauldrons cost about 26s, so theoretically a peasant could afford a set if they spent almost nothing for a whole year.
Now, in Forbidden Lands, your farmer hirelings are paid 5 coppers a day (2.25 gold/month, 18.25 gold a year). They need to pay for their own food according to the rules but then again you build fields and gardens in your stronghold so I'd say food is free.
5 coppers are enough to afford 2 flagons of ale (about half a gallon), 1 chicken or a fish.
They would need to save for 4 days to afford an axe, a week for a sheep or a pair of boots.
If one saved most their earnings for about a month they could afford basic militia gear: leather armor, studded leather cap, a shield, and a spear.
They can buy 18 cows a year or 6 riding horses! (cows and riding horses are definitely very cheap in the Forbidden Lands, especially in a "post-crisis" economy; a riding horse in the 13th century could worth anywhere from 50s to 10 pounds!).
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So, my verdict is that after some research the base economy is close enough to historical sources (again, this is not empirical study) but it makes me notice that the price of some stuff is way off (historically speaking, not necessarily from the point of view of an economic system that needs to work with adventuring PCs and loot tables).
I'd be tempted to increase the cost of horses and some buildings. It's a bit off that a mere farmer could almost finance two cottages or a stone tower after a year of savings. I think it's weird that a farmer can afford 4 suits of fine garments a year. More so that a farmer could afford 2 sets of plate armor a year!
Given, that farmer would need to almost not spend a coin for a whole year, and that's probably very hard when you already have so little.
Sources for the curious and doubtful:
https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-brea ... iddle-Ages
https://books.google.ca/books?dq=editio ... &q&f=false
http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng240/early ... rrency.htm
http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/15748/1 ... _15748.pdf