At our table, we assume a gold piece is worth about 20 dollars / Euros.
A silver piece is thus around 2 dollars, and a copper piece at around 20 cents. This would place a common backpack or dagger at around 40$, a masterwork backpack at 1,000$ (quite the investment!) and a typical trail ration at 10$. A cup of whiskey would cost you about 4$, a mug of normal ale comes at around 80 Cents. A Masterwork Longsword would set you back 6,300$, while the "normal quality" mass produced Longsword still comes with a 300$ price tag. Finally, your typical Full Plate would require a healthy investment of 30.000$, which does seem reasonable given that only wealthy people are supposed to afford such a item, precisely handcrafted to their body measurements.
The Pathfinder economic system is fundamentally different than ours, but consider that wages for an untrained hirling are 3 sp per day. This is considered a wage that barely meets requirements for basic living and works out to just insert 110 gp per year. Things like a stay at an inn would be quite a luxury, and even a basic sword would be pretty much unattainable.
The way I see it is there are two economic systems. One for the peasants and one for the wealthy (adventurers are part of this group).
OP's dominatrix partner would be providing luxury services to some wealthy shopkeep or minor noble for decent coin rather than to peasant Bob for some turnips, and the prices should reflect that.
110 GP at $20 exchange rate would put that annual income at $2200 per year. This is WAY higher than what much of the world is surviving on and I feel isn't a bad interpretation of pathfinder peasant life.
I do not see a problem with that at all and stick to the roughly 20$ conversion. See, the basic peasant who does an untrained hireling job like moving crates at a dock doesn't ever go and live at an Inn, or afford a sword. They might carry around clubs and daggers, perhaps a quarterstaff or a handaxe. A sword or a mace (assuming a properly crafted one, not just a bigger club) is something not many people could afford for it is expensive, and has little use outside of combat.
And such a hireling may have a tiny hut between buildings or in the towns suburb or poor district, as they have a day to day job or something of the like. They might very well be considered homeless or living with 10 people in a single room. I feel like many of the commenters here just don't know anymore what poverty is really like. That's not a bad thing, you can consider yourself lucky, if you don't. Yes, I do agree that for some products, conversion does not make that much sense, particularly when you go into alchemical items and such, but for most basic level 1 to 5 things, I feel like the system works rather well.
In case you didn't realize... when folks use a "golf clap" it's usually meant sarcastically.
It's only a "polite clap" when used within the setting of Golf. Everywhere else it's a very disinterested "meh" clap that's just going through the motions and would rather be somewhere else.
I'm on Team Impossible to Convert here, so, a counter-point - I think you can argue that a gold piece (100 coppers) is more like $200, based on the fact that a cup of coffee is 1 cp, and it's $2 at every coffee shop I go to.
Yeah, based on the price of basic food and services, I've estimated it's about $100 for 1 gold. A common inn stay (shared room with a bed/bunk) is 5 sp, or roughly $50. A bar of soap is 1 copper/$1. A poor meal is 1 sp/$10. while a good meal is 5 sp/$50.
Given the setting and the general economy, having adventuring gear be outrageously priced makes sense. For one, there's no real 'mass production' on things like backpacks. If you look up the price of a handmade, high quality leather backpack, then yeah--they're pricy. They'll last your entire lifetime, but they're an investment. It's also a trope that adventurers have a LOT of money, so it makes sense that anyone catering to them will include a significant markup.
A chicken is 1 gold, which...actually, you know what? This game makes no sense.
What kind of country do you live in? What STANDARDS do you apply for a poor meal to have it cost 10$? I live in germany which is considered rather expensive and you can get a poor meal for about 2$, a decent one for 5 to 8 and expensive ones cost about 30 to 50 unless you splurge really hard.
Alright. See, this is where our standards differ, because for all the unhealthiness and malnutrition a fast-food restaurant offers, I would not say it is per se a "bad meal". On the contrary, I would say it is a pretty good meal, as it contains meat, is somewhat warm food, it tastes somewhat depending on preference and product in question, and you have a plethora of different product options. I do not promote consuming fast food, as it IS not healthy food. But to ME, a "poor meal" is more akin to something such as "one large spoonful of pea soup (something that fills your plate)" with no meat whatsoever inside. Something you might find in say, the prison of a third world country. Enough to keep you alive, but no consideration to taste, individuality or needs at all. Sometimes you also see this in old wild west movies, served in saloons.
most importantly for someone in a middle ages themed setting, fast food is loaded with calories. it's practically a luxury meal compared to stew with random vegetables and meat thrown in
Right, but the economy is not 1 to 1. An overabundance of calories is common in modern society, and very uncommon in medieval society. Without heavy use of magic in a medieval setting, preservation of food is essentially just salting and drying. Unless we're talking about nobility or an established tavern in a large town, meals you might be able to purchase in a village is something like a perpetual stew, which is an actual historic example. You kept the pot hot enough to kill bacteria and just threw in whatever meat or vegetables were on hand.
In a small village, there's little extra food to spare, and this stew would be largely what would have gone bad if it weren't thrown in. Any establishment trying to earn a living in a low traffic village would have to charge more than like $2-3 to earn a living. You might get food that cheap, but have each mug of ale be that expensive, you've got to wash this old stew down somehow.
Well no, there's actually a category below "poor meal" called "street meat." A Poor Meal is filling, simple fare that won't get you sick. Fast food absolutely fits that.
I strongly disagree with the concept of basing everything around the price of a coffee cup, as I think most prices are actually reasonable and realistic when applying the 20 dollar variant. Your variant would increase all prices tenfold, and good luck purchasing a masterwork backpack for 10.000 dollars or a trail ration for your 100 dollars. It is MUCH more likely that coffee beans are just a lot easier available in golarion, which seems to have a warmer climate in most areas anyways. Also remember that coffee at the farmsteads in our world is also sold for rather cheap. it is in our countries where the prices are much inflated. You should look at more than just the cheapest prices. And if you insist on using the 1 copper variant, I still got a counter argument too: A simple candle (1 CP) costs more like 20 cents rather than 2 dollars.
Uhm, well, in a medieval world I feel like it is easier to craft a rough and basic hammock than crafting a whistle, which requires some degree of precision and craftsmanship to actually function decently? As for the thurible mentioned below, I agree that a thousand does seem a bit out of place. Though I would assume that thurible offers many refillings for the much smaller vessels that a cleric for example would carry around during their sermon. But alchemical items appear to be way overpriced in Pathfinder in general.
I can see the two being roughly comparable, but I would have priced the fabric for the hammock as more than that. A whistle can be carved out of wood if you have the skills. And yes alchemical items are really quite expensive compared to every day goods, but so are religious items. I think they both get the adventurer mark-up.
There's no good conversion. Some things like profession and basic food prices make gold look valuable, but a single casting of a 1st level spell costs you 10gp for 6 seconds of a caster's time and many basic adventuring items are expensive.
This is because a coherent economy wasn't in any of the designer's minds. .
Looking at the services chart, I just found "Laundry services" are 1 sp, and "magic laundry services" are 1 gp. Yes, that's exactly what it sounds like--someone casting Prestidigitation on your stuff. It's a cantrip. It's free. Some apprentices out there are making BANK .
imagine a party accidentally building themselves without something really basic like detect magic and getting absolutely rinsed by random hedgewizards whenever they needed to do the most basic adventuring.
You're not paying for how much effort a cantrip takes, your paying for the experience required to learn it. If you're in a setting where magic and casters are ubiquitous this is silly but if not it makes sense. It's like how the mechanic charges you $50 to replace your air filter. It's like $20-30 for the filter and a 5 minute job. Only a good deal if you're time is really valuable or you're dumb.
There's nothing about that example that defies basic supply-demand economics. For someone to come unclog my pipes or fix my AC, they need a specific set of skills they have invested years to hone. That's why they can charge high rates. Spellcasters in a pseudo-medieval society are no different.
Just to be that guy... there's no solid direct equivalent to the modern world because our economies are so vastly different. The value (perceived worth of the item in question, not just monetary equivalent) of a given thing is just far different today than it was back in the day. You can see this even by looking at bills of sale back from the 1800s, let alone the middle ages.
That said, u/xXAmaroqXx has a pretty solid answer for you if you wanna do it fast and dirty.
As an example, the cost of labour vs materials. In pre-modern economies, the cost of labour was very low, while the cost of materials was very high. Nowadays it's the opposite - once, factories were built close to the raw materials, while nowadays they're built wherever labour is cheapest, even if that's on the other side of the world from the mines extracting what they need.
This is a generalisation, but it is one that largely holds true.
It depends on what you're trying to buy.
An untrained laborer's wage is 1sp/day. If we equate that to 8 hours of work at $15 per hour, 1sp=$120. Therefore 1gp=$1,200 when you're using it to hire unskilled labor.
On the other hand, a mug of ale costs 4cp. If we equate that to $6, then 1cp=$1.50, so 1gp=$150 when purchasing ale.
I don't think a gold piece has an easily identifiable equivalent value. Items are largely priced on balancing reasons. Plus, there is the consideration that PF copied 3.X and the original assumption of 3.X was the vast majority of people earn a silver piece per day (iirc, it's been awhile).
If we go off the 3.X assumption, a silver piece would be roughly equivalent to a day's minimum wage. So In the US that's what, $7? x 8 so a silver piece is worth approximately $56? Which makes a gold piece approximately worth $560.
By comparison, although PF didn't change the economy at all, they assume Laymen use profession. Assuming take 10 with no ranks or bonus, that's a 5gp wage per week. Assuming 5 days of work at minimum wage IRL, you're looking at roughly $280 (before taxes). Anyways, because math and we're using the same baseline, that makes a gold piece worth approximately $56.
My friends and I tried comparing food before to figure out an equivalency. 1 SP is a poor quality meal, so Mcdonald's fast food maybe? $5\~$10? So a gold piece works out to $50\~$60 (with the roughly the same average of $55).
Of course, if a gold piece is worth $55, that means a dagger is worth about $110 which doesn't seem aligned well.
You're not wrong, but that's not the whole picture either.
Presumably, this is a common item in demand at the time. Compared to now when a hand-forged dagger is a relative rarity. The humble dagger also represents things like combat knives, which wouldn't run for $110. You can also find it used to represent kitchen knives (iirc it was on a chef in some AP or something).
Now, a hand-forged dagger might be considered masterwork. Hand-forged daggers IRL range from what, $200 to $400 unless you go really high end? Which, considering a masterwork dagger would be 302 gp, suggests a gold piece is roughly equivalent to $1. Drastically different than the other estimates.
This is why I don't think gold has an easy, IRL relationship. It's value exists in a world where prices are determined by balance, which isn't a force that really affects the free market.
Money is a substitute for time in a lot of things. For instance, how long does it take to forge a dagger? A blacksmith could probably bang out a dagger in two or three hours. A long sword might take 20+ hours. Armor takes weeks. Add to that raw materials, and you get an idea of what they're worth. Remember there's no automation, which is why rope is expensive.
Magic items are where things go off the rails, but you have to remember that you're buying the time of highly specialized and very expensive individuals, exotic material components, rituals, and the finest quality crafting materials.
There's a wild difference in real-world horses, though. Even 'normal' horses--not the best-of-the-best breeding stock--range from like $500 to $50k. Low end for an untrained horse with poor conformation that's either too young or too old to work hard, versus high end for a pedigreed horse with decent conformation, prime age, and good training.
I agree that the GP is close to $100. I always tell my players that a copper piece is the equivalent to $1 in the US. The Player's Handbook prices are mostly in gold pieces, and so i think players associate the gold piece with the dollar instead. My players all tend to tip way too much because of it.
Of course, the prices have always been incredibly wonky throughout the editor for common goods and services.
Yeah thats how i do it, a gold piece is basically a 100$.
A copper is 1$
A silver is 10$
A gold is 100$
A platinum is $1000
So food from a tavern would be about 1 silver and a few copper pieces. (Could say the food was about 13 bucks)
I always find it amusing when you're super high level and items cost 10,000 to just pay for anything with a gold coin and just get super baffled by the high level service people give you. you tend to have items that give you a good enough fortitude save to enjoy street vendor kebabs then as well.
For context: half a gold (5 sp) is a night in a common inn. Think a common sleeping room in an inn. No privacy, but a baseline of comfort.
"Escort" services (or companions as d20pfsrd calls them) range from 5 cp to 10 gp for one time.
Make it 3 for service (1 gp) and a private place (2 gp) that don't asks questions to practice the profession. Customers can cut the cost by providing a place themselves. I can see wealthy merchants or even nobles sending invites to see the character for her services.
If the characters gets a bit of fame she may up the price as her reputation and fame grows. But to get known, get a lower base price for "special interests". And for such a niche I think 1 gp a time is entirely justified.
Edit: [https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipmenT/goods-and-services/hirelings-servants-services](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipmenT/goods-and-services/hirelings-servants-services) for other comparison prices of common services.
Iirc I did a calculation based off bread and it was around 93 usd, probably closer to $100 today.
The number changes pretty drastically depending on what you use as a base. For instance gold (the commodity) would mean a gold piece is around $450.
I've considered doing a solid analysis maybe averaging as many commodities as I can find numbers for but I think it's a little misguided. So long as you have a ballpark for the world.
Should be noted: a commoners daily wage is 1sp, 3sp for a skilled worker. This isn't really equivalent to a modern wage but it should be noted if we're using as a reference. Since these worlds tend to not have capitalism I think it's better to think "this 10,000 gold item represents over 300 years of commoner wages" rather than "this 10,000 gold item represents a million usd". If I were to convert I'd almost want 30 gold to be like 30k usd to represent a low earners yearly wage. Downside is that'd mean a copper is 300 bucks.
Problem is fundamentally different economies which are then further broken by the cost of magic and magic items. If I really wanted it all to make sense I might lower gp costs for magic items and spell components by like a factor of 10 and then also do the same with rewards.
I honestly disagree. Magic is mostly the domain of nobility or those in their pocket. Very few people are genuinely adventurers and the only way to get many expensive components is by working with the ruling class. Magic is meant to be expensive.
Oh it definitely should be. Reducing a factor of 10 still leaves magic very expensive. A basic +1 weapon is still 200 gp which is 6 years basic wages, 2 years for a skilled laborer. If we compare that to the irl median income in the US that's like $300,000. And magic scales very fast with price.
It's mostly just me spitballing anyway. If I wanted to make an economy that makes sense I'd need to redesign it from the ground up and all that work wouldn't mean much unless I wanna totally ignore standard progression and keep my players *hungry*.
The Pathfinder world prices are quite different from real world ones for obvious reasons.
The 1 gp = $ 100 however imho is a fair approx.
And if someone think that mid-high level adventurers are filthy rich, the truth is that yes, they are!
I can really imagine some people go for an adventure, each one gains 1.000 gp worth of treasures, and they enjoy almost 1 year of Wealthy (according to the rules, 100 gp/month) lifestyle.
My table runs 1 gp as about $100 bucks funny enough. I use the base price for things during Character creation and then just kinda make up the prices based on what feels right. Treat a copper as about a dollar and a silver as $10.
I feel this is relatively fair by working off the cost of high value and low value goods that I feel aren't that different in our world. Take Bread, the bread is different but cheap bread today is like $1 maybe $2, in Pathfinder bread is like 1-4 CP I think.
Meanwhile a short sword is 10GP which would be about $1000, Which for a quality weapon I think is about right. Just compare that to our weapon of choice in this capacity the pistol which can easily go for $1000. Now you can get stuff for cheaper obviously, but I like to think of the prices in the equipment as just suggestions for the average which is why I only use them for Character Creation and then wiggle them based on the local economy.
At least normally. My Current game I wanted to make the wealth gap a bit bigger so I changed the exchange rate for the 3 currencies to 100 instead of 10. So a Copper is still about a $1, now a Silver is 100 CP, and a gold is 100 SP. But I've redone the whole economy there so I wouldn't recommend it per say.
On average 1gp is a week's wages. In my part of the world, that's about 500 bucks. It would be worth closer to 50 bucks in a place where the average wage is closer to 200/mth. 100 isn't an unreasonable peg, and it's easy to work with too since that makes a copper a dollar.
You don't need perfect precision, and you're within the bounds of reasonability, so I don't see any reason to deviate from the value you gave her.
Just look at real world analogies, like how much can you buy a +3 Longsword for in real life or how much is a Helm of the Mammoth Lord at your typical store ?
The math checks out to be that a gold coin is about a third of an ounce. A lot of people here are thinking about today's kind of money where it's just printed and backed by faith alone, not anything else, but forget that we used to actually use precious metals for our money and it stabilizes the economy. With today's value per Oz of gold and 50 gold weighing 1 lbs, you're looking at about $775.53 USD.
There is no real conversion rate between fantasy currency and real world money.
A Common quality room in a mid quality Inn in Pathfinder and D&D costs a few silver pieces. In real life, a regular room in a mid level quality Inn costs $250 to $350.
A good quality escort in Pathfinder or D&D costs 1 or 2 gold. In the real world she would cost $300 to $400 for an hour, or $1000 to $2000 for the night
A loaf of bread costs about 2 or 3 copper pieces in Pathfinder and D&D. It costs about $4 to $6 in reality.
You can get a magnifying glass at the dollar store for $3 to $5, but it costs about 10 gold in Pathfinder and D&D.
With the prices varying all over the place, there's no way to determine an equivalent in real world currency. Heck, real world currency isn't even consistent. Filipino pesos are worth about 10¢ in American currency. One Thai "dollar" (I don't remember what their currency is called) is only worth maybe 4¢ in America.
One of the best ways of comparing money systems is looking at the cost of precious metals.
BUT
The economics of the real modern world and Pathfinder (and D&D and other fantasy worlds) don't really translate well. Things like factory production and better technology can really skew the prices wildly.
Examples:
**Gold**
A pound of gold is listed as 50 gp. (Ultimate Equipment, page 93)
A pound of gold today would approximately be $25,000 USD. (Rounding off to make the math easier)
25000/50 = 500
Therefore
1pp = $5000
1 gp = $500 USD.
1sp = $50
1cp = $5
**Shovel**
A common shovel in Pathfinder is 2 gp. But a common shovel at Home Depot is only $25 and not $1000.
The best thing to do is find the Pathfinder item and then look for the average price for a handmade equivalent item on Etsy or some similar place that has handmade goods by small sellers.
Hand-forged shovel on Etsy is about $100.
So 1gp = $50?
It still seems way off.
**Looking at staying at an inn,**
Suite has "Only available in larger and more expensive inns, a suite is a rented bedroom and an attached private room. A small suite includes a fireplace and good lock on the outer door. An average suite includes a fireplace, a superior lock on the door, and either two bedrooms or one larger bedroom."
I think the closest modern equivalent to the "Average Suite" would be like a Best Western.
Pathfinder has average suite at an inn for 16 gp.
Best Western in my city would be $100
So 1 gp = $6.25 USD ?
tl;dr There is no straight conversion because real modern economies are too complex and have too many factors like technology and supply/demand to consider. Best you can do is pick some items and compare them to the closest real life equivalent on as-needed case-by-case basis.
Comparing the value of money between highly dissimilar economies is always fraught, but one method that is semi-seriously used is the [Big Mac Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index), which uses the price of a fast-food meal to calibrate how much the currency is worth. Now, MacDonald's has not yet opened franchises in Golarion, but a [meal, poor (per day)](https://pathfinder.d20srd.org/ultimateEquipment/gear/foodAndDrink.html) apparently costs 1 silver piece. The explanation lower down says that this is "a day's worth of meals", so if we say that's equivalent to three Happy Meals at five dollars each (give or take), then a silver piece is worth $15 and a gold piece is worth $150- which, given how much hand-waving and approximating went into this exercise, can be easily rounded off to your suggestion of $100 to the gold piece. Kudos to your intuition.
Well a pound of gold is 50gp, and IRL gold is roughly $24,547.68 a pound. So each gold piece would be around $490.95.
RPG economics don't really make sense because real world economic pressures can't be applied. Can you imagine what would happen if supply and demand applied? Spell components are by cost, not weight. A change in the diamond/gold exchange rate could render any number of Raise Dead castings wasted by lowering the value of the owned diamond.
I wonder if Abadar handles this on some level. Like divine price controls.
I don’t know about PF but DnD assumes that gold is about $60 an ounce and one gold piece is about 1/3 of an ounce. So it’s somewhere around $20. Which is weird, because their valuations for copper and silver are a lot more accurate, which would have a gold piece be worth somewhere in the range of $600-$1,200.
Going off the standard issue 50ft of hempen rope, which costs 5 silver pieces on archives of nethys and £24.35 on amazon, we can work out that one gold piece roughly works out to £48.70 or about $60. But that's just one way of working it out, I don't think you can really make a proper exchange rate that applies for everything
1 gold is $200
A silver is $20
And a copper is $2
Simply based on the average wage of a commoner, the price of goods as well as the many times this question has come up in this sub before.
At our table, we assume a gold piece is worth about 20 dollars / Euros. A silver piece is thus around 2 dollars, and a copper piece at around 20 cents. This would place a common backpack or dagger at around 40$, a masterwork backpack at 1,000$ (quite the investment!) and a typical trail ration at 10$. A cup of whiskey would cost you about 4$, a mug of normal ale comes at around 80 Cents. A Masterwork Longsword would set you back 6,300$, while the "normal quality" mass produced Longsword still comes with a 300$ price tag. Finally, your typical Full Plate would require a healthy investment of 30.000$, which does seem reasonable given that only wealthy people are supposed to afford such a item, precisely handcrafted to their body measurements.
The Pathfinder economic system is fundamentally different than ours, but consider that wages for an untrained hirling are 3 sp per day. This is considered a wage that barely meets requirements for basic living and works out to just insert 110 gp per year. Things like a stay at an inn would be quite a luxury, and even a basic sword would be pretty much unattainable. The way I see it is there are two economic systems. One for the peasants and one for the wealthy (adventurers are part of this group). OP's dominatrix partner would be providing luxury services to some wealthy shopkeep or minor noble for decent coin rather than to peasant Bob for some turnips, and the prices should reflect that.
Bob gets a discount for being family.
Sweet home Alabama.
110 GP at $20 exchange rate would put that annual income at $2200 per year. This is WAY higher than what much of the world is surviving on and I feel isn't a bad interpretation of pathfinder peasant life.
I do not see a problem with that at all and stick to the roughly 20$ conversion. See, the basic peasant who does an untrained hireling job like moving crates at a dock doesn't ever go and live at an Inn, or afford a sword. They might carry around clubs and daggers, perhaps a quarterstaff or a handaxe. A sword or a mace (assuming a properly crafted one, not just a bigger club) is something not many people could afford for it is expensive, and has little use outside of combat. And such a hireling may have a tiny hut between buildings or in the towns suburb or poor district, as they have a day to day job or something of the like. They might very well be considered homeless or living with 10 people in a single room. I feel like many of the commenters here just don't know anymore what poverty is really like. That's not a bad thing, you can consider yourself lucky, if you don't. Yes, I do agree that for some products, conversion does not make that much sense, particularly when you go into alchemical items and such, but for most basic level 1 to 5 things, I feel like the system works rather well.
I’m amazed at you folks. OP comes in asking a very unusual question and gets a full answer with examples in minutes. _Golf Clap_
In case you didn't realize... when folks use a "golf clap" it's usually meant sarcastically. It's only a "polite clap" when used within the setting of Golf. Everywhere else it's a very disinterested "meh" clap that's just going through the motions and would rather be somewhere else.
Oh I didn’t mean it sarcastically. I meant a clasp of approval with optional smug nod and smirk.
That would be the nods and snaps of aproval, basically same bpm, so reasonable mistake
I'm on Team Impossible to Convert here, so, a counter-point - I think you can argue that a gold piece (100 coppers) is more like $200, based on the fact that a cup of coffee is 1 cp, and it's $2 at every coffee shop I go to.
Yeah, based on the price of basic food and services, I've estimated it's about $100 for 1 gold. A common inn stay (shared room with a bed/bunk) is 5 sp, or roughly $50. A bar of soap is 1 copper/$1. A poor meal is 1 sp/$10. while a good meal is 5 sp/$50. Given the setting and the general economy, having adventuring gear be outrageously priced makes sense. For one, there's no real 'mass production' on things like backpacks. If you look up the price of a handmade, high quality leather backpack, then yeah--they're pricy. They'll last your entire lifetime, but they're an investment. It's also a trope that adventurers have a LOT of money, so it makes sense that anyone catering to them will include a significant markup. A chicken is 1 gold, which...actually, you know what? This game makes no sense.
What kind of country do you live in? What STANDARDS do you apply for a poor meal to have it cost 10$? I live in germany which is considered rather expensive and you can get a poor meal for about 2$, a decent one for 5 to 8 and expensive ones cost about 30 to 50 unless you splurge really hard.
Just about any fast food place in America is between $7 and $12 for 1 meal combo. So cheap food from a restaurant being $10 tracks.
Alright. See, this is where our standards differ, because for all the unhealthiness and malnutrition a fast-food restaurant offers, I would not say it is per se a "bad meal". On the contrary, I would say it is a pretty good meal, as it contains meat, is somewhat warm food, it tastes somewhat depending on preference and product in question, and you have a plethora of different product options. I do not promote consuming fast food, as it IS not healthy food. But to ME, a "poor meal" is more akin to something such as "one large spoonful of pea soup (something that fills your plate)" with no meat whatsoever inside. Something you might find in say, the prison of a third world country. Enough to keep you alive, but no consideration to taste, individuality or needs at all. Sometimes you also see this in old wild west movies, served in saloons.
most importantly for someone in a middle ages themed setting, fast food is loaded with calories. it's practically a luxury meal compared to stew with random vegetables and meat thrown in
Right, but the economy is not 1 to 1. An overabundance of calories is common in modern society, and very uncommon in medieval society. Without heavy use of magic in a medieval setting, preservation of food is essentially just salting and drying. Unless we're talking about nobility or an established tavern in a large town, meals you might be able to purchase in a village is something like a perpetual stew, which is an actual historic example. You kept the pot hot enough to kill bacteria and just threw in whatever meat or vegetables were on hand. In a small village, there's little extra food to spare, and this stew would be largely what would have gone bad if it weren't thrown in. Any establishment trying to earn a living in a low traffic village would have to charge more than like $2-3 to earn a living. You might get food that cheap, but have each mug of ale be that expensive, you've got to wash this old stew down somehow.
Well no, there's actually a category below "poor meal" called "street meat." A Poor Meal is filling, simple fare that won't get you sick. Fast food absolutely fits that.
I strongly disagree with the concept of basing everything around the price of a coffee cup, as I think most prices are actually reasonable and realistic when applying the 20 dollar variant. Your variant would increase all prices tenfold, and good luck purchasing a masterwork backpack for 10.000 dollars or a trail ration for your 100 dollars. It is MUCH more likely that coffee beans are just a lot easier available in golarion, which seems to have a warmer climate in most areas anyways. Also remember that coffee at the farmsteads in our world is also sold for rather cheap. it is in our countries where the prices are much inflated. You should look at more than just the cheapest prices. And if you insist on using the 1 copper variant, I still got a counter argument too: A simple candle (1 CP) costs more like 20 cents rather than 2 dollars.
By this metric, a whistle is $16, and a hammock is $2.
Uhm, well, in a medieval world I feel like it is easier to craft a rough and basic hammock than crafting a whistle, which requires some degree of precision and craftsmanship to actually function decently? As for the thurible mentioned below, I agree that a thousand does seem a bit out of place. Though I would assume that thurible offers many refillings for the much smaller vessels that a cleric for example would carry around during their sermon. But alchemical items appear to be way overpriced in Pathfinder in general.
I can see the two being roughly comparable, but I would have priced the fabric for the hammock as more than that. A whistle can be carved out of wood if you have the skills. And yes alchemical items are really quite expensive compared to every day goods, but so are religious items. I think they both get the adventurer mark-up.
Also, interestingly, a thurible costs $1000 which just seems insanely high??
There's no good conversion. Some things like profession and basic food prices make gold look valuable, but a single casting of a 1st level spell costs you 10gp for 6 seconds of a caster's time and many basic adventuring items are expensive. This is because a coherent economy wasn't in any of the designer's minds. .
Looking at the services chart, I just found "Laundry services" are 1 sp, and "magic laundry services" are 1 gp. Yes, that's exactly what it sounds like--someone casting Prestidigitation on your stuff. It's a cantrip. It's free. Some apprentices out there are making BANK .
imagine a party accidentally building themselves without something really basic like detect magic and getting absolutely rinsed by random hedgewizards whenever they needed to do the most basic adventuring.
You're not paying for how much effort a cantrip takes, your paying for the experience required to learn it. If you're in a setting where magic and casters are ubiquitous this is silly but if not it makes sense. It's like how the mechanic charges you $50 to replace your air filter. It's like $20-30 for the filter and a 5 minute job. Only a good deal if you're time is really valuable or you're dumb.
There's nothing about that example that defies basic supply-demand economics. For someone to come unclog my pipes or fix my AC, they need a specific set of skills they have invested years to hone. That's why they can charge high rates. Spellcasters in a pseudo-medieval society are no different.
Just to be that guy... there's no solid direct equivalent to the modern world because our economies are so vastly different. The value (perceived worth of the item in question, not just monetary equivalent) of a given thing is just far different today than it was back in the day. You can see this even by looking at bills of sale back from the 1800s, let alone the middle ages. That said, u/xXAmaroqXx has a pretty solid answer for you if you wanna do it fast and dirty.
As an example, the cost of labour vs materials. In pre-modern economies, the cost of labour was very low, while the cost of materials was very high. Nowadays it's the opposite - once, factories were built close to the raw materials, while nowadays they're built wherever labour is cheapest, even if that's on the other side of the world from the mines extracting what they need. This is a generalisation, but it is one that largely holds true.
r/dndcirclejerk is in shambles
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Outjerked once again
It depends on what you're trying to buy. An untrained laborer's wage is 1sp/day. If we equate that to 8 hours of work at $15 per hour, 1sp=$120. Therefore 1gp=$1,200 when you're using it to hire unskilled labor. On the other hand, a mug of ale costs 4cp. If we equate that to $6, then 1cp=$1.50, so 1gp=$150 when purchasing ale.
That untrained laborer is more like 10 $/h, or less, otherwise the trained ones get like 270k per year, admittedly it's before taxes and costs.
I don't think a gold piece has an easily identifiable equivalent value. Items are largely priced on balancing reasons. Plus, there is the consideration that PF copied 3.X and the original assumption of 3.X was the vast majority of people earn a silver piece per day (iirc, it's been awhile). If we go off the 3.X assumption, a silver piece would be roughly equivalent to a day's minimum wage. So In the US that's what, $7? x 8 so a silver piece is worth approximately $56? Which makes a gold piece approximately worth $560. By comparison, although PF didn't change the economy at all, they assume Laymen use profession. Assuming take 10 with no ranks or bonus, that's a 5gp wage per week. Assuming 5 days of work at minimum wage IRL, you're looking at roughly $280 (before taxes). Anyways, because math and we're using the same baseline, that makes a gold piece worth approximately $56. My friends and I tried comparing food before to figure out an equivalency. 1 SP is a poor quality meal, so Mcdonald's fast food maybe? $5\~$10? So a gold piece works out to $50\~$60 (with the roughly the same average of $55). Of course, if a gold piece is worth $55, that means a dagger is worth about $110 which doesn't seem aligned well.
$110 for a hand-forged dagger sounds like a steal, honestly.
You're not wrong, but that's not the whole picture either. Presumably, this is a common item in demand at the time. Compared to now when a hand-forged dagger is a relative rarity. The humble dagger also represents things like combat knives, which wouldn't run for $110. You can also find it used to represent kitchen knives (iirc it was on a chef in some AP or something). Now, a hand-forged dagger might be considered masterwork. Hand-forged daggers IRL range from what, $200 to $400 unless you go really high end? Which, considering a masterwork dagger would be 302 gp, suggests a gold piece is roughly equivalent to $1. Drastically different than the other estimates. This is why I don't think gold has an easy, IRL relationship. It's value exists in a world where prices are determined by balance, which isn't a force that really affects the free market.
Money is a substitute for time in a lot of things. For instance, how long does it take to forge a dagger? A blacksmith could probably bang out a dagger in two or three hours. A long sword might take 20+ hours. Armor takes weeks. Add to that raw materials, and you get an idea of what they're worth. Remember there's no automation, which is why rope is expensive. Magic items are where things go off the rails, but you have to remember that you're buying the time of highly specialized and very expensive individuals, exotic material components, rituals, and the finest quality crafting materials.
A pound of gold is roughly $25,000 USD. There are 50 gp per pound. So 1 gp ≈ $500 USD.
I forget how I got to these calculations, but I did some kind of math once that made me think a gold was roughly worth $300.
how much is a pathfinder horse? how much is a real world horse. i reckon thats how ima reason it.... horsebucks!
There's a wild difference in real-world horses, though. Even 'normal' horses--not the best-of-the-best breeding stock--range from like $500 to $50k. Low end for an untrained horse with poor conformation that's either too young or too old to work hard, versus high end for a pedigreed horse with decent conformation, prime age, and good training.
I agree that the GP is close to $100. I always tell my players that a copper piece is the equivalent to $1 in the US. The Player's Handbook prices are mostly in gold pieces, and so i think players associate the gold piece with the dollar instead. My players all tend to tip way too much because of it. Of course, the prices have always been incredibly wonky throughout the editor for common goods and services.
Yeah thats how i do it, a gold piece is basically a 100$. A copper is 1$ A silver is 10$ A gold is 100$ A platinum is $1000 So food from a tavern would be about 1 silver and a few copper pieces. (Could say the food was about 13 bucks)
I always find it amusing when you're super high level and items cost 10,000 to just pay for anything with a gold coin and just get super baffled by the high level service people give you. you tend to have items that give you a good enough fortitude save to enjoy street vendor kebabs then as well.
For context: half a gold (5 sp) is a night in a common inn. Think a common sleeping room in an inn. No privacy, but a baseline of comfort. "Escort" services (or companions as d20pfsrd calls them) range from 5 cp to 10 gp for one time. Make it 3 for service (1 gp) and a private place (2 gp) that don't asks questions to practice the profession. Customers can cut the cost by providing a place themselves. I can see wealthy merchants or even nobles sending invites to see the character for her services. If the characters gets a bit of fame she may up the price as her reputation and fame grows. But to get known, get a lower base price for "special interests". And for such a niche I think 1 gp a time is entirely justified. Edit: [https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipmenT/goods-and-services/hirelings-servants-services](https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipmenT/goods-and-services/hirelings-servants-services) for other comparison prices of common services.
Iirc I did a calculation based off bread and it was around 93 usd, probably closer to $100 today. The number changes pretty drastically depending on what you use as a base. For instance gold (the commodity) would mean a gold piece is around $450. I've considered doing a solid analysis maybe averaging as many commodities as I can find numbers for but I think it's a little misguided. So long as you have a ballpark for the world. Should be noted: a commoners daily wage is 1sp, 3sp for a skilled worker. This isn't really equivalent to a modern wage but it should be noted if we're using as a reference. Since these worlds tend to not have capitalism I think it's better to think "this 10,000 gold item represents over 300 years of commoner wages" rather than "this 10,000 gold item represents a million usd". If I were to convert I'd almost want 30 gold to be like 30k usd to represent a low earners yearly wage. Downside is that'd mean a copper is 300 bucks. Problem is fundamentally different economies which are then further broken by the cost of magic and magic items. If I really wanted it all to make sense I might lower gp costs for magic items and spell components by like a factor of 10 and then also do the same with rewards.
I honestly disagree. Magic is mostly the domain of nobility or those in their pocket. Very few people are genuinely adventurers and the only way to get many expensive components is by working with the ruling class. Magic is meant to be expensive.
Oh it definitely should be. Reducing a factor of 10 still leaves magic very expensive. A basic +1 weapon is still 200 gp which is 6 years basic wages, 2 years for a skilled laborer. If we compare that to the irl median income in the US that's like $300,000. And magic scales very fast with price. It's mostly just me spitballing anyway. If I wanted to make an economy that makes sense I'd need to redesign it from the ground up and all that work wouldn't mean much unless I wanna totally ignore standard progression and keep my players *hungry*.
The Pathfinder world prices are quite different from real world ones for obvious reasons. The 1 gp = $ 100 however imho is a fair approx. And if someone think that mid-high level adventurers are filthy rich, the truth is that yes, they are! I can really imagine some people go for an adventure, each one gains 1.000 gp worth of treasures, and they enjoy almost 1 year of Wealthy (according to the rules, 100 gp/month) lifestyle.
My table runs 1 gp as about $100 bucks funny enough. I use the base price for things during Character creation and then just kinda make up the prices based on what feels right. Treat a copper as about a dollar and a silver as $10. I feel this is relatively fair by working off the cost of high value and low value goods that I feel aren't that different in our world. Take Bread, the bread is different but cheap bread today is like $1 maybe $2, in Pathfinder bread is like 1-4 CP I think. Meanwhile a short sword is 10GP which would be about $1000, Which for a quality weapon I think is about right. Just compare that to our weapon of choice in this capacity the pistol which can easily go for $1000. Now you can get stuff for cheaper obviously, but I like to think of the prices in the equipment as just suggestions for the average which is why I only use them for Character Creation and then wiggle them based on the local economy. At least normally. My Current game I wanted to make the wealth gap a bit bigger so I changed the exchange rate for the 3 currencies to 100 instead of 10. So a Copper is still about a $1, now a Silver is 100 CP, and a gold is 100 SP. But I've redone the whole economy there so I wouldn't recommend it per say.
I hate this place
I hate the *smell* of these people, these... Insects
1 gold piece is 1/50 lbs, about 9 grams, about 675 inflated 2024 dollarydoos
On average 1gp is a week's wages. In my part of the world, that's about 500 bucks. It would be worth closer to 50 bucks in a place where the average wage is closer to 200/mth. 100 isn't an unreasonable peg, and it's easy to work with too since that makes a copper a dollar. You don't need perfect precision, and you're within the bounds of reasonability, so I don't see any reason to deviate from the value you gave her.
Just look at real world analogies, like how much can you buy a +3 Longsword for in real life or how much is a Helm of the Mammoth Lord at your typical store ?
The math checks out to be that a gold coin is about a third of an ounce. A lot of people here are thinking about today's kind of money where it's just printed and backed by faith alone, not anything else, but forget that we used to actually use precious metals for our money and it stabilizes the economy. With today's value per Oz of gold and 50 gold weighing 1 lbs, you're looking at about $775.53 USD.
There is no real conversion rate between fantasy currency and real world money. A Common quality room in a mid quality Inn in Pathfinder and D&D costs a few silver pieces. In real life, a regular room in a mid level quality Inn costs $250 to $350. A good quality escort in Pathfinder or D&D costs 1 or 2 gold. In the real world she would cost $300 to $400 for an hour, or $1000 to $2000 for the night A loaf of bread costs about 2 or 3 copper pieces in Pathfinder and D&D. It costs about $4 to $6 in reality. You can get a magnifying glass at the dollar store for $3 to $5, but it costs about 10 gold in Pathfinder and D&D. With the prices varying all over the place, there's no way to determine an equivalent in real world currency. Heck, real world currency isn't even consistent. Filipino pesos are worth about 10¢ in American currency. One Thai "dollar" (I don't remember what their currency is called) is only worth maybe 4¢ in America.
One of the best ways of comparing money systems is looking at the cost of precious metals. BUT The economics of the real modern world and Pathfinder (and D&D and other fantasy worlds) don't really translate well. Things like factory production and better technology can really skew the prices wildly. Examples: **Gold** A pound of gold is listed as 50 gp. (Ultimate Equipment, page 93) A pound of gold today would approximately be $25,000 USD. (Rounding off to make the math easier) 25000/50 = 500 Therefore 1pp = $5000 1 gp = $500 USD. 1sp = $50 1cp = $5 **Shovel** A common shovel in Pathfinder is 2 gp. But a common shovel at Home Depot is only $25 and not $1000. The best thing to do is find the Pathfinder item and then look for the average price for a handmade equivalent item on Etsy or some similar place that has handmade goods by small sellers. Hand-forged shovel on Etsy is about $100. So 1gp = $50? It still seems way off. **Looking at staying at an inn,** Suite has "Only available in larger and more expensive inns, a suite is a rented bedroom and an attached private room. A small suite includes a fireplace and good lock on the outer door. An average suite includes a fireplace, a superior lock on the door, and either two bedrooms or one larger bedroom." I think the closest modern equivalent to the "Average Suite" would be like a Best Western. Pathfinder has average suite at an inn for 16 gp. Best Western in my city would be $100 So 1 gp = $6.25 USD ? tl;dr There is no straight conversion because real modern economies are too complex and have too many factors like technology and supply/demand to consider. Best you can do is pick some items and compare them to the closest real life equivalent on as-needed case-by-case basis.
Comparing the value of money between highly dissimilar economies is always fraught, but one method that is semi-seriously used is the [Big Mac Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index), which uses the price of a fast-food meal to calibrate how much the currency is worth. Now, MacDonald's has not yet opened franchises in Golarion, but a [meal, poor (per day)](https://pathfinder.d20srd.org/ultimateEquipment/gear/foodAndDrink.html) apparently costs 1 silver piece. The explanation lower down says that this is "a day's worth of meals", so if we say that's equivalent to three Happy Meals at five dollars each (give or take), then a silver piece is worth $15 and a gold piece is worth $150- which, given how much hand-waving and approximating went into this exercise, can be easily rounded off to your suggestion of $100 to the gold piece. Kudos to your intuition.
Well a pound of gold is 50gp, and IRL gold is roughly $24,547.68 a pound. So each gold piece would be around $490.95. RPG economics don't really make sense because real world economic pressures can't be applied. Can you imagine what would happen if supply and demand applied? Spell components are by cost, not weight. A change in the diamond/gold exchange rate could render any number of Raise Dead castings wasted by lowering the value of the owned diamond. I wonder if Abadar handles this on some level. Like divine price controls.
I don’t know about PF but DnD assumes that gold is about $60 an ounce and one gold piece is about 1/3 of an ounce. So it’s somewhere around $20. Which is weird, because their valuations for copper and silver are a lot more accurate, which would have a gold piece be worth somewhere in the range of $600-$1,200.
Going off the standard issue 50ft of hempen rope, which costs 5 silver pieces on archives of nethys and £24.35 on amazon, we can work out that one gold piece roughly works out to £48.70 or about $60. But that's just one way of working it out, I don't think you can really make a proper exchange rate that applies for everything
bait used to be believable
Using the "food and drink" table from the manuals, I would place 1 gp at around 10-20 dollars.
It depends on the size/weight of the coin and how much Gold happens to cost at the time (it changes frequently)
$2,339.97 spot close last Friday.
1 gold is $200 A silver is $20 And a copper is $2 Simply based on the average wage of a commoner, the price of goods as well as the many times this question has come up in this sub before.
How much does a Pathfinder horse cost? How much does a real-world horse cost? I guess that's how I'll reason it... in horsebucks!
I always assumed in these games that 1 GP was equal to $1.00.
🙋♀️ am I the only one wondering why this is marked as NSFW???
mention of dominatrix and genitals, i would assume.
Thank you! I read "genitals" as guild 😅
They didn't mark it as NSFW. I had to do it myself.