Good Economics in Your 5e Handbook? Focus Up! (Archive)

Do you want to experience the fullest potential that D&D 5e has to offer?

For those few of you who use the 5e’s Lifestyle system, hold unto your butts. For those of you who don’t, but continue to read, hold unto your brain cells!

Part 1: The Leap

As is, chapter 5 of the Player’s Handbook (PHB) gives you 3 tables to work for playing with in-game financing, the first two:

• Lifestyle Expenses (LE)
• Food, Drink, & Lodging (FDB)

are overtly tied to each other with the second table referencing the first

However, there are some inconsistencies when trying to cross-reference. Take a look.

Mo Money, Mo Problems

No Money, Even Mo Problems

Part 2: Let’s Get Corn Nuts

How do we fix this? Simple, take Life (expenses) and turn it, flipped upside down. Instead of Expense, read it as Income.

Right next to the (LE) table are descriptions for these lifestyles, where Poor and Comfortable are associated with unskilled and skilled labor respectively.

Combined with the 3^rd table, Services on P. 159, which gives data on daily wages (income) of skilled and unskilled workers.

• Unskilled = Poor = 2sp per day
• Skilled = Comfortable = 2gp per day

At this point, all I have is a turd, but I can see kernels of corn in that turd. With which, I will grow my own crop, and sustain myself. I will take the husk of the corn and make tamales of industry, I will collect the silk and, let me look up what to do with corn silk… make dolls of capital?…

I think the analogy has run its course. The point is, the product of this investigation has led to a

Robust, Simple, and Fun, way to get into economics, which I will share with you now!

Tangent: Unresolved Issues

For the sake of brevity and clarity, this article only addresses the general situation and attempts to fix foundational issues. There are some problems, however, that still need to be addressed, such as:

• Self-sufficiency to lifestyle: Quality of life by nature’s bounty.
• Practicing a Profession: Quality of life by employer.
• Xanathar’s Irregular wages: Roll well paid well.

I understand that the original purpose of these tables was to provide rules and costs for adventurers between adventuring periods with lots of money to spend, but I think I can squeeze out a system that can also answer the same concerns for non-adventurers.

Not everyone has large payouts that they can subsist off of between gigs. What dose a world without disposable income look like for someone reliant on wages? how would they afford non-necessitates, like tool repair, clothes, emergencies, etc? If you’re interested in the world-building implications of a system that takes these concerns into account, check out:

“And Alexander Wept, For There Were No More World to Conquer.”

– Plutarch

Part 3: Fin

Instead of 2 expense tables, which conflict with each other, have 1 which wont conflict with itself!

Keep the more specific table, (FDL). Make it the Lifestyle Expenses table. Then, turn (LE) into (LI) I stands for Income, and extrapolate income for every lifestyle with the help of the Services table.

For your viewing pleasure, I present my Lifestyle expense system. Using all the same math from the old system. Tables calculated to Copper Piece (cp)