this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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I love doing recreational math! I'm not trying to "debunk" the comic or anything, I just think this is fun
Assuming this is fifth edition D&D, there are a variety of ways you could derive an exchange rate between gold pieces and USD. My favorite is the cost of living, since that accounts for any discrepancies between availability/supply/demand of particular goods, and cuts right down to how much it costs to live a given lifestyle.
I make roughly $20,000 a year, which places me squarely in the "modest" section. I don't go hungry or thirsty, my living conditions are clean and simple, and I'm able to maintain my equipment. In 5e, this costs me 1 gp per day. I can't put much into savings, so I earn 365 gp/year.
$20,000/365 ≈ 54 USD per gold piece. I'm rounding it down to $50 because it's easier. That $150 might buy them a couple days off work which is.. more of a vacation than I've had in years
I think where it breaks down is that even 1 coin a day is already insanely high for medieval times. A modest person would earn maybe 10 coins a year, if they are somewhat qualified or really good at what they do. And that's only for people living in cities.
For most people, living in the countryside, they would see very little currency. You'd mostly own what you could build, grow, raise or barter, and you'd rarely have enough surplus that you could sell for coin. To get 1 gold coin you'd have to sell 2 or 3 sheep but how often would a modest person have animals they don't absolutely need to keep ? Not something that's going to happen every year.
Even the innkeeper would not see 365 gold coins a year, that kind of revenue would be way upper class.
It's basically impossible to equate D&D to real history because you can't account for the differences in supply and demand (or even the prevalence of different natural materials) between medieval Europe and 15th century DR Faerûn, let alone account for the fact that wizards can literally make gold. The best we have to go off of is the official rules describing the different lifestyle tiers and how much they cost on average.
The average bar costs, what, $25,000–50,000 a month to run? Based on a lifestyle expense equivalent of $50–100 per gp, they probably see somewhere between 10 and 30 gp per day. And that's just gold piece equivalent, most of it is probably in copper or silver pieces
No need to go through USD. If 1gp is a day of modest living, then 3gp will buy them 3 days of modest living - or a day and a half each.
Then again - they still need to pay city taxes on the tavern during that day and a half, and maybe rent too, so I don't know take can afford even a single day with these 3gp...
$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
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 am comfortable
Hey, I don't know if this is how you want to hear this, but 20k/yr is far below the poverty line in the United States. I don't know if you are self employed/entrepreneurial but that comes out to just above $10/hr, which is below even the federal minimum wage requirements.
Federal minimum wage in USA is $7.25 USD. It's even shittier than you were told.
Hmm, I thought the Biden administration had successfully pushed it up to some pittance like $11 or something. Or at least that was my recollection. Consider me corrected.
I'm aware. The thing is, the next lowest lifestyle bracket in 5e is "Poor," which is described as
I don't have to contend with violence or crime, and the only reason I have to contend with disease is because I live in the US. Like, even people living a Comfortable lifestyle live in fear of our "healthcare" system.
By modern first world country standards, I'm definitely poor. By medieval fantasy standards, I'm pretty comfortable
What's the income required to share a studio apartment with six people, never have healthcare, and subsist on a diet of simple grains? That's the modern equivalent of a Medieval peasant lifestyle. Remember, in this era, it was common for entire large families to share a single bed.