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To be perfectly clear, nobody involved in designing the economics of the D&D world ever had an MBA, degree in economics, or even was a certified public accountant. Consequently, and unsurprisingly, the economic rules of D&D do not actually make sense and have never made sense in any previous edition. The major reason this is true is that the D&D world is not really designed with macroeconomics in mind. D&D economics is primarily designed around the microeconomics of the PCs.

The best way to understand the economics of D&D is to start with the basics. The base unit of currency in D&D is the gold piece. There are also other units of currency, including the silver piece, copper piece, platinum piece, electrum piece, and astral diamond, depending on the edition. Across the various editions, the value ratios between these coin types has changed, but the classic value ratio is 10:1 in an increasing ratio of copper to silver to gold to platinum. In other words, if a gold piece is a dollar, a copper is a penny, a silver is a dime, and a platinum is a ten dollar bill.

D&D is designed as a medieval setting where the majority of people in the world are poor common laborers and peasants. The world has a small number of very wealthy nobles and a moderate number of "middle class" merchants. There also exists an adventurer class that falls outside the normal spectrum of wealth. As is common in medieval settings, the prosperity levels between the first three classes are large. A commoner generally earns a few silver from a month's work and is lucky to ever see a gold piece in an entire lifetime. A merchant trades in silver and gold commonly and usually has a platinum or two in savings at any time. A noble has no need of any coin other than platinum, except to pay servants, and often has large coffers of gems worth several or even hundreds of platinum each.

This disparity in wealth levels makes even the simplest of economies unrealistic. Any economy that works for one class is meaningless to the other two classes. The thing that really adds to the discrepancies in this economy is the adventurer class. Adventurers are designed to start at a wealth level at or near the wealth level of commoners and over the course of a reasonably short period of time (a few months to a few years, usually) reach a wealth level that is much higher than most nobles. And, they are expected to find these vast amounts of wealth in previously undiscovered

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