I'm run game in Greyhawk (now PCs are in the Verbobonk viscounty). One of PCs was killed in the battle, and others PC decided to find cleric to resurrect him. But they are only 2-nd level party and have not enough money. I have decided to allow them to take loan from one merchant.
Did anybody meet any mention about loan percentage in Greyhawk's canon sources?
Did somebody (DM) sell kill insurances to PCs? For example, PC give 100 gp per month, and insurance company pay for resurrection.
However, there have been many articles mentioning the idea of loans in D&D, most of them (as far as I can recall) in old Dragon magazines. The rule of thumb seems to be 20% interest, but I've never seen any hard-and-fast rules about payment amounts, interest periods, or other modern financial innovations.
Fortunately for you, the exact same situation arose in my own campaign just recently. The party, based in Hommlet, lost 2 members in a recent fight. Since they're only 2nd level they, like your party, didn't have the funds for a resurrection. But there is a moneychanger in Hommlet. I've ruled that he will loan them enough to purchase a reincarnation spell since they're already carrying enough equipment to cover the loan if they don't repay. He's charging 20% interest yearly. The players had to sign a promissory note that has been registered with Lord Burne, the local ruler.
According to the note the players have 6 months to come up with at least half of the principal, plus 20% of that amount. If the moneychanger doesn't see any money by then, things might get ugly...
Of further curiosity, what are the consequences of missing payments? It would depend on who was doing the lending. Members of a criminal organization would not hesitate to hire leg breakers or worse to claim payment.
With magic at their disposal even upstanding banking institutions would have recourse to claim ownership of dungeon spoils after an outstanding balance had made its way into the legal ledgers. Adventurers are not popular in some lands and debtor imprisonment might be legal.
Imagine such a legal transgression coming to the attention of a Cuthbertine in your band. Ratted out by your own party priest for a fee of 700 gold orbs. Worst Needfest ever.. in the city jail.
I think 20% per year is so small for a world like Greyhawk and for adventurers...
If you look at it from the perspective of a gamer, then yes, it's too small. Tons of characters make it to high level (and thus higher income brackets) within a few weeks or months of starting their careers. In my recent AoW campaign, for example, the PCs progressed from 1st to 24th level in about 8 game months (the actual game took well over a year in real time - and I consider that waaay too fast, by the way, but we were playing according to the RaW...).
If, however, you look at it from the perspective of real-world situations it makes a lot more sense. In my case, I now deliberately engineer events such that the timeline makes more realistic sense. Thus, 20% per year IMC works just fine. I suppose each DM must consider what works best for his/her own campaign.
Historically, though, I've seen rates ranging from 10% with an indefinite due date all the way up to 1000% payable at the end of the year.
Found this: A History of Interest Rates
Personal Loans
Best Credits: 43 1/3% - 52%
Poorer Credits: 80 - 120%
Individual: 60%
Pawnshops: 43 1/3
Commercial Loans 10 - 16%
Annunities and Mortages: 8 - 10%
Given the christian prohibition against loaning money and charging interest to a fellow christian; european banking was almost entirely run by jewish moneylenders.
The Knights Templar was given special permission from the pope to practise banking; they quickly took control of the banking industry from the jewish lenders. Being a powerful religious order; default creditors could be threatened with excommunication.
King Philip IV was already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war with the English; he began pressuring the Church to take action against the Order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts. With Philip threatening military action unless the Pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the Order, citing the public scandal of heresy that had been generated by confessions extracted under torture.
I can certainly see a faith like Zilchus setting up an internation banking system and tensions arising with default noble creditors. Hope the Patriarch of Zilchus learns from the templars mistake and not push the King Lynwerd of Nyrond for repayment.
Medieval loans were not structured like modern loans, with a percentage of interest due. You borrowed "X" amount of money and agreed to pay 1.5X on a specified date or whatever.
Getting a loan when you weren't a landowner was nearly impossible, since no one would have any reason to think you'd still be around to repay it. Loans also generally had to be countersigned by witnesses, whose job was to attest that the loan terms as written were what was actually agreed upon.
Lenders rarely had the clout of their clients (though organizations like the Templars were an exception) so the main threat for default was inability to borrow in the future, though it was sometimes possible to take the defaulter to court.
Frankly, adventurers are about the last sorts that would get loans without putting up collateral...they have no ties to the community and are highly mobile. Some merchant in Hommlet isn't going to have the resources to chase them down if they skip town and Lorne Burne is certainly not going to spend time as someone else's debt collector. So, really, adventurers would use the equivalent of pawn shops: "Here's this valuable object to hold against the money you are giving me. If I don't repay it, you can sell the item in question."
As for insurance, that was generally handled by guilds and benevolent societies: essentially forms of what is now called "self insurance". Groups would collect moneys from its members into a general fund which would pay out as needed for individual needs. Most commonly this was for things like funeral expenses.
Proper "insurance" contracts separate from tools to distribute risk amongst actual investors was principally a feature of late medieval and rennaissance maritime shipping.
Obviously, that's all "real world" stuff and you can ignore it if you want for your campaign. D&D certainly has a more monetary economy than anything medieval, so its not hard to give it a more advanced economy overall.
But the problem still boils down to "how can I ensure this fellow pays what he owes instead of leaves town?" Unless you have a really advanced legal and police system in your Greyhawk, wandering types are pretty much SOL in such cases. If you are looking specifically at life restoration, I'd probably have the priests handle the matter rather than having the PCs borrow the money to pay the temple. If the temple can raise dead, it can probably "Quest" or "Geas" or the like. And it certainly has scrying and other resources to help with defaulters.
I can certainly see a faith like Zilchus setting up an internation banking system and tensions arising with default noble creditors. Hope the Patriarch of Zilchus learns from the templars mistake and not push the King Lynwerd of Nyrond for repayment.
That's an awesome idea, and could go toward explaining another reason why the Naelex were able to displace the church of Zilchus from the position of Holy Censoriate (Besides the Naelex being avid supporters of Hextor's church). From the LGG it's implied that the Overking needs the consent of the Kingdom's other sects to replace control of the Censoriate with another sect. The Hextorians had considerably weakened the church of Heironeus during the Turmoil Between Crowns through military might. In the mean time the GK's nobility and the other churches had gotten up to their eyeballs in hock to the bank of Zilchus, so when Ivid proposed taking the Censoriate away from Zilchus, none of the other faiths had too much of a problem, and the Heironeans weren't in a position to protest.
It is also a good way to garner support from the noble class:
My fellow princes those money grubbing priests seek to bankrupt us all, something must be done, support me and your debts are forgiven. Let the priests of Zilchus learn want and loss.
- Wink to the Hextorians off stage.
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