World Building: Macro-economics (Part 2)

(Updated)

This post is a dump of fairly raw data on the amount of goods produced by a manor. This data is meant to be scaled up to the province level, not detailed down to Harn-like granularity. My long term aim is to create price indexes for a few broad ranges of goods from which I can derive prices for items on the equipment lists and for trade should the player wish to try their hands as merchants. The information here will be used to set the production values of the base index.

The manor produces Food, Metals, Raw Textiles and Timber and exports these items to local urban centers where they are consumed or worked by craftsmen into manufactured products. These are the average amounts produced per manor, not every manor's output will be strictly as described below. In a small barony of five manors there may be only one mining operation which produces 1500 lbs of metal per year and no mining at all in the other manors.

Amount of Food:

• 1 acre produces on average 500 lbs of foods per year.
• A person consumes about 5 lbs of food per day.
• 20 acres supports 1 family adult and dependents with 10000 lbs of food per year or 5 tons. (Includes feed and seed.)
  
• A manor of 100 feeds 50 city families which is 500000 lbs of food per year or 250 tons.
• This food is produced on 3000 acres.
• Includes grains, meat, grapes, milk, fruit, etc.

Amount of Metal:

• Iron produced at 3 pounds per capita per year.
• A manor of 100 produces 300 pounds per year.
• This is mostly iron but can include gold, silver, copper, tin, zinc, etc.

Amount of Textiles, Furs, Hides:

• Linen from flax.

Flax 1000 lbs per acre of which there is spinable flax for 25 yards of linen.

5 yards per outfit.

Acres of flax per manor = 10% of 3000 = 300 acres which produces 150 tones per year or 7500 yards of linen or 1500 outfits.

• Leather

Pigskin is common.

10' sq per pig.

400 pigs per manor, 25% butchered a year.

50 lbs of meat per pig

5000 pounds of meat per year or 2.25 tons (as apart of total food)

1000' sq feet pigskin or ~100 yards of leather, 20 outfits.

Cowskin from naturally loses only, i.e. 10% of herd.

Herd of 100 cattle.

40' sq feet per cow

400' sq ft leather per year

~45 yards of leather or 9 outfits

Deer, Elk

Hunt 50 a year

20' sq feet per animal

1000' sq feet deerskin or ~100 yards of leather, 20 outfits.

Sheep

200 sheep per manor, 10% loses

5' sq ft leather

10 lbs of fleece per year, 15 yards of wool or 3 outfits

2000 lbs of wool per year or 1 ton or 3000 yards or 600 outfits

100' sq ft or 9 yards or 2 outfits

• Furs (beaver, rabbit, fox, ermine, etc)

Hunt 50 per year

~4' sq ft furs

20 yards per year

Amount of Timber:

• 200 trees per acre, 30' tall 10" diameter, 500 lbs. or 100 tons per acre total.
• Sustained harvest at 10% = 20 trees weighing 10000 lbs. or 5 tons.
• 200' board feet per ton. (Board feet 144" cubed.) 10' 2"*4" is 960' cu. is 6.66 board feet.
• 10' by 10' wooden wall (30 2*4s) is 200 board feet.
• Acres of timber per manor = 10% of 3000 = 300 acres which produces 1500 tones per year.
• A 20' by 30' for wooden house requires 22 tons of raw timber.
• 1 urban family burns 20 tons of wood as fuel per year reducing available timber to 500 tons per year.
• Building upkeep for 100 dwellings reduces available timber by 200 tons.
• 300 tons of timber available per year.

Total yearly exports of a manor:

• Food: 250 tons (Mostly grains, some meat, fish)
• Metal: 300 lbs (Mostly iron)
• Textiles: flax for 7500 yards of linen, 3000 yards wool, ~250 yards of leather (Pig, Deer, Cattle), 20 yards of furs (Beaver, Rabbit, Stoat)
• Timber: 300 tons

Total Value of Exported Goods: ~1800 GP per year

• Food 1CP @ 50lbs - 100 GP
• Metal(iron) 2GP @ lbs - 600 GP
• Timber 1GP @ ton - 300 GP
• Flax 1GP @ "42 yards" - 180 GP
• Wool 1GP @ "25 yards" - 120 GP
  
• Leather 1GP @ "1.5 yards" - 375 GP
• Furs 10GP @ "1.5 yard" - 133 GP

Next post will look at urban wages and will determine prices for common adventuring items based off the information provided here.

I Attack Magic Missile With My Darkness

The forthcoming post on building economic systems is still in R&D mode but I decided not to let that stop me from posting about something which has recently raised a red flag for me.

In the 4e rules update from July 6, 2010, Magic Missile gets a major revision:

"Page 159: Replace the Attack, Hit, and Special
entries with the Effect and Special entries in the
power below. This update reflects an effort to restore
the power to its classical form.

...

Effect: 2 + Intelligence modifier force damage.
Level 11: 3 + Intelligence modifier force damage.
Level 21: 5 + Intelligence modifier force damage.
Special: If the implement used with this power has an
enhancement bonus, add that bonus to the damage. In
addition, you can use this power as a ranged basic attack."

To me, this sounds like an extraordinarily bad idea for several reasons. The stated thinking of restoring the spell to its "classical" form seems flawed. While granting the traditional "automatic" and "unerring" aspects to the spell with one hand, the other hand removes the just as iconic d4 damage dice. More importantly are the game balance aspects which didn't feel particularly broken in the first place. Pre-4th edition, it had limited availability in accordance with the number of spell slots the caster wished to devote to the memorizing the spell. In 4e, Magic Missile is an at-will spell that can be cast without limit at first level. No other character class has anything approaching this general guarantee of combat effectiveness. It certainly steps on the turf of the ranged attack based strikers. It also indirectly nerfs the threat of minions who will be dropped in a steady manner like clockwork. Is the archetypal image of the mage really akin to this?:



But of course with MM, the ammo never runs out.

I suspect this is one rules "fix" I'll ignore.