Quote from: Kuroth;986120Slaves have no personal Luck or Charisma and are usually low IQ.  Their Luck may be considered that of their master's, and while a slave my be good looking, he or she will not have the leadership abilities that go with standard CHR.

Dafuq?

Spartacus, Shajar al-Durr, and many others would disagree with this pretty strongly. Slaves are unlucky in the sense that they are slaves, but I would put their IQ and leadership abilities the same as any other social class. Charisma and leadership ability aren't the same as social status. There were many times when slaves were more learned than their masters - Greek tutors for Romans, or Irish monks for vikings, for example.

Quote from: AsenRG;986221nd even I know that Neverwinter would never allow that to happen to them!

I don't know enough about Neverwinter to tell if this is sarcasm or not.

Is Neverwinter a shining city on a hill?

In EPT, prices are as follows:

Type                                                                     Price*

Servant boy or girl.                                                  150 kaitars
Untrained labour: torchbearers, bearers, etc.                200 kaitars
Plebeian occupations:                                               2,000 kaitars
Skilled occupations:                                                 5,000 kaitars
Noble occupations:                                                  10,000 kaitars        
Overseer, major domo for estate:                               8,000 kaitars
Trainable man-at-arms (1st lvl warrior)                        5,000 kaitars
Priest or Magic USer (1st or 2nd lvl only)                     10,000 kaitars
Trained dancing girl, courtesan                                  20,000 kaitars
Nonhuman (friendly races only)                                  15,000 kaitars

1 kaitar =  1 gp.

Quote from: AsenRG;986221I concur, but it's his gold, or more likely, someone else's gold that he acquired;).

Look your initial questions is partly nonsense because as you see from the answer a lot of "How much slaves costs" depends on the context of the setting. Yeah it is his gold, but it doesn't make sense that it is Neverwinter.

To resolves this, what is the source of the slaves? Luskan, a Underdark outpost, something to do with the Zhentarim? Because it isn't Neverwinter unless we are talking something illicit with the thieves guild. So what the context?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;986256Is Neverwinter a shining city on a hill?

Actually it is.

QuoteNeverwinter, also known as the City of Skilled Hands or the Jewel of the North, was a metropolis sitting on the northwestern Sword Coast of Faerûn.[6] Neverwinter was regarded by Volo as the most cosmopolitan and the most civilized city in all of Faerûn. The city was a member in good standing of the Lords' Alliance.[7]

Source

If your campaign is set in the present day of Forgotten Realms I suppose you could be having something going on with the leader Dagult Neverember who is Lawful Neutral. But everything about him and the current situation indicate that while there been a lot of turmoil, the people of Neverwinter still view themselves as the good guys and Dagult is only trying to change their attitude enough to make him king and be willing to do what needed to turn Neverwinter into the capital of a mercantile empire.

Of course your version of the Forgotten Realms could be different but like I said earlier it getting hard to answer your questions without any context.

Quote from: jhkim;986248Dafuq?

Spartacus, Shajar al-Durr, and many others would disagree with this pretty strongly. Slaves are unlucky in the sense that they are slaves, but I would put their IQ and leadership abilities the same as any other social class. Charisma and leadership ability aren't the same as social status. There were many times when slaves were more learned than their masters - Greek tutors for Romans, or Irish monks for vikings, for example.

It is an interesting bit in Tunnels & Trolls, which is usually thought of as a rather kindly old game. ha To expand upon or build from the rule I quoted from the game, more competent slaves as you mention would be handled as the high Charisma sort, with additional cost required for these that have some Luck, perhaps 180 GP per Luck point (LCK 4 would cost an additional 360 gold).  So, a scholar slave or gladiator would be pretty expensive in those rules. I suppose the thing to take for other games is to set base price upon attributes.

Edit: Given the nature of forum, I should say that quoting the rule from the game doesn't mean I think it is necessarily great for any particular campaign.  It just is, take it or leave it.  A rather efficient little rule, though.  Classic Tunnels & Trolls type feature for an extremely side issue.

Quote from: GameDaddy;985811We  are  reduced  to  the  mere  assumption  that  slave prices in Republican Italy ought to have been relatively low during the massive expansion of the regional slave complex. Roman  law  required  dealers  to  disclose  the  ethnic  origin  (natio)  of  slaves:  that  some  groups  were  considered  more  desirable  than  others  hints  at  the  presence  of  racialist  attitudes  within an otherwise indiscriminately voracious regime of slaving. Such prejudices, however, were not normally elaborated beyond generic slurs against entire cultures or narrow recommendations of  groups  thought  suitable  for  specific  tasks,  such  as  the  notion  that  slave  families  from  Epirus  made superb herders.

Thats not unique to ancient Rome. In the Colonial period (North America), the Irish were considered unsuitable slaves (indentured servants, but slaves in all but name) because they tended to die quickly in the hot humid conditions of the south, especially when put to hard labor.  The native populations (Indians, or Native Americans if you prefer) were also considered unsuitable slaves, because they would simply refuse to work, preferring death to slavery nearly universally, which eventually led to the importing of Africans, who were better suited to the environment than the Irish, and were more tractable than the Indians, probably for cultural reasons.... eg slavery and the slave trade was widely practiced in Africa for generations (largely thanks to the influence of Islam, which only officially banned the practice in... 1962.)

Please keep the pseduo-expertise on history and race in Pundency.

What are you, my mom?

Maybe.

Well... get out of here, you're embarrassing me!

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;986256I don't know enough about Neverwinter to tell if this is sarcasm or not.

Is Neverwinter a shining city on a hill?

As Estar said, it is.
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Neverwinter
And it is only sarcasm to the degree that I'm generally sarcastic towards the idea of big groups of people abiding by high moral standards. Which is to say, I was quite sarcastic.

Quote from: estar;986296Look your initial questions is partly nonsense because as you see from the answer a lot of "How much slaves costs" depends on the context of the setting. Yeah it is his gold, but it doesn't make sense that it is Neverwinter.

To resolves this, what is the source of the slaves? Luskan, a Underdark outpost, something to do with the Zhentarim? Because it isn't Neverwinter unless we are talking something illicit with the thieves guild. So what the context?

Yeah, that's why I agreed with you.
OTOH, the player might want to behave in a way that is uncharacteristic for the location. If he wants to spend money to get a 0-level NPC to boss around, at the potential cost of legal issues, why should the GM stop him:D?

The best thing that ever happened to America was the Indians refused to be slaves.  Before the English imported black slaves, they imported more English.  And then the working English were able to negotiate a better deal and eventually a democracy.

Quote from: AsenRG;986353OTOH, the player might want to behave in a way that is uncharacteristic for the location. If he wants to spend money to get a 0-level NPC to boss around, at the potential cost of legal issues, why should the GM stop him:D?

I am not arguing that the players should be stopped from spending his gold. To clear I am pointing out how the player even going to get the opportunity to spend any money on slaves given what has been posted about the circumstance?

Seriously is he standing in the streets of Neverwinter, going "Hey I want to buy a slave got some for a sale?" Where does the player thing he can find slaves to buy in the first place? The answer to which will allow for better advice for what the price should be.

Also as a note to figure out how Roman prices or any other time period or circumstance would relate you have to also know the wage of a common laborer who is a freeman. That ratio will allow you translate that information into a price that works with D&D 5th edition (or another games system).

Quote from: Headless;986360The best thing that ever happened to America was the Indians refused to be slaves.  Before the English imported black slaves, they imported more English.  And then the working English were able to negotiate a better deal and eventually a democracy.

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If people want to reply to this or talk about the history of slavery take it into punditcy. If this occur let me know and I still transfer the relevant posts from this thread to there.

In this thread keep the discussion focused on the historical prices of slavery and how to translate into something usable for a given RPG campaign. Bonus point if it relevant to the Forgotten Realms.

If you ignore this I will mock thy literacy.
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