I live in Wichita, KS, with roommates. I realize the cost of living here is lower than most places, so maybe I should double the value of a gold piece. It’s definitely very tight, but I think my situation (living in an apartment with roommates) is roughly equivalent to renting a room in a boarding house. I’m able to afford my cell phone and can get regular oil changes for my car, which I think counts as “maintaining my equipment.”
Really, I think modest living probably needs to be defined carefully here. Consider how medieval peasants actually lived (entire large families living in one room cottages, often sharing a single bed.) I would say that the modern equivalent would be sharing a studio apartment with four roommates.
A modest lifestyle keeps you out of the slums and ensures that you can maintain your equipment. You live in an older part of town, renting a room in a boarding house, inn, or temple. You don’t go hungry or thirsty, and your living conditions are clean, if simple. Ordinary people living modest lifestyles include soldiers with families, laborers, students, priests, hedge wizards, and the like.
By modern first world standards, I’m definitely poor. By the standards of a medieval fantasy setting, I’m doing alright
$20k/yr where? In the U.S. that would be very tight, so the math might change a bit based on local cost of living.
Yeah those are poverty wages in large swaths of the country
Try the entire country. I’m pretty sure even the lowest bar has poverty at like 35-38k annually for a one person house hold at this point.
20k is functionally homeless or a dependent of someone else.
I live in Wichita, KS, with roommates. I realize the cost of living here is lower than most places, so maybe I should double the value of a gold piece. It’s definitely very tight, but I think my situation (living in an apartment with roommates) is roughly equivalent to renting a room in a boarding house. I’m able to afford my cell phone and can get regular oil changes for my car, which I think counts as “maintaining my equipment.”
Really, I think modest living probably needs to be defined carefully here. Consider how medieval peasants actually lived (entire large families living in one room cottages, often sharing a single bed.) I would say that the modern equivalent would be sharing a studio apartment with four roommates.
A modest lifestyle in 5e is defined as
By modern first world standards, I’m definitely poor. By the standards of a medieval fantasy setting, I’m doing alright