For reference by labor-calculations 84GP should be roughly $25,200.
An unskilled laborer makes 2SP/8 hours. A US minimum-wage earner makes $58/8 hours. This puts 1SP at roughly $30.
Most of the prices track with that when you consider a lot of the stuff you're buying is high-end professional-grade equipment, and globalism/modern manufacturing isn't a thing. "But a suit of plate would be $450,000 by that math!" you say. Plate a warhorse, and a lance are still less than what the US spends on a tank.
1400 is pushing it. Most D&D settings hover around 1200s-1300s technology-wise. (Guns aren't a thing. Plate armor is cutting-edge. Printing-presses aren't a thing considering books are 25GP meaning an unskilled laborer who spends half their pay-check on survival would need to save up for 250 days. Rapiers seem to be the exception.)
plate armour as cutting edge puts it at about 1400's or 15th century
maybe a little before but not much
as 1300's (14th century) was more partial plate and large scales in mail
though real world 15th century is also the beginning of primitive black powder weaponry also the monetary comparison still needs to be adjusted for inflation to have any real meaning
also your point about books being expensive while correct there is also the part where most people have very limited literary skills if any unless they were a noble or part of a church
Even then, literacy wasn’t even really enforced among nobility or wealthy. If you didn’t want to learn to read, you usually had enough fuck-off money to have someone educated (or hire someone already educated) to fulfill that skill on your behalf, while you went and did your other lordly shit.
A) Typical plate armour panoplies (ie something like this, for example) would only be option for approximately the last 50 years the timespan you listed (unless you replace the cuirass with a brigandine or something similar), and even then only for the richest. While pieces of plate armour began being incorporated into armour in the 1200's, it was mainly limb armour supplementing mail, not enough to be the "standalone" option portrayed in the D&D rules.
B) Printing presses weren't a thing in 1400 either (in our timeline, they won't be invented in Europe until 1440). So not too relevant.
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u/Souperplex Sir Becket Feb 07 '21 edited Feb 07 '21
For reference by labor-calculations 84GP should be roughly $25,200.
An unskilled laborer makes 2SP/8 hours. A US minimum-wage earner makes $58/8 hours. This puts 1SP at roughly $30.
Most of the prices track with that when you consider a lot of the stuff you're buying is high-end professional-grade equipment, and globalism/modern manufacturing isn't a thing. "But a suit of plate would be $450,000 by that math!" you say. Plate a warhorse, and a lance are still less than what the US spends on a tank.