@Velorien @OliWhail @eaglejarl I present to you, in hopes of 10 XP and being a bit helpful:
Radvic's Analysis of Plausible Economics in Leaf
Disclaimer: Not an economist by any fashion. Doing some voodoo magic here.
Abstract: We want to assign cost of living and pay rates for missions. So, let's throw some ballpark numbers around. First, we'll define a variable X from which to base our economic assumptions off of. Second, we will determine how much of this variable is likely available to fund ninja missions. Third, we will determine the relative costs of ninja missions based off their risk factors. Finally, we will solve for X using information given in the quest to determine the costs of missions.
Extra Disclaimer: now, we know that to say Medieval economies operated via "money" is to entirely misunderstand their system (see
Manorialism). That said, we're going to do it anyways and just say "Marked for Death is different than medieval economies because magic." With pesky reality out of the way, we can proceed to generating numbers and variables making entirely anachronistic capitalist assumptions. I'll note that the presence of a "merchant council" indicates that these assumptions may have some merit into how MfD works.
Defining X
So, farmers are unlikely to ever see any money in Marked for Death. Why? Because likely, they live in land owned or "protected" by ninja or councils or mayors, or Daimyos, or whatever, and they just keep enough food to survive, and wear rags and stuff they make themselves in their free time. This is pretty similar to our experience in the village in Iron.
Ok, but there are more than just peasant civilians in Marked for Death - they've got a whole medieval structure and a few cities. So, let's look at what's probably the lowest non-peasant class, and most common group in cities, and primary provider of value. Skilled laborers. We'll assume there's some labor classes, e.g. Blacksmiths, florists, sandal-makers, butchers, bakers, etc. There's likely a range of pay depending on the work and skill, but I wouldn't expect it to span more than one order of magnitude. So, let's assign our base money unit X to be "a generic skilled laborer's daily take-home pay." This means that X should be enough to 1) pay for daily food for at least 2 people (children assumption), 2) pay for clothing, 3) pay for a portion of a dwelling (we'll say 50% - assuming that each hovel has 2 skilled laborers paying for it). We'll calculate this value at the end, after relating it to ninja mission pay.
Calculating available Mission Funding
Now, let's estimate how many skilled laborers there are in Fire. We know that Konoha has ~30,000 residents. We also know there are ~1,500 ninja. Presumably, there are also some farmers, and bureaucrats and miscellaneous officials who don't provide goods/services. So, let's estimate there to be ~25,000 skilled laborers. This puts us at 25000 X per day for "goods produced in Konoha." Let's assume that there is effectively a 10% overhead which will eventually go to pay for ninja missions. This puts "funding provided for ninja missions by Konoha alone" at ~2500 X per day.
Now, we also know that there are other cities in Leaf. Specifically, there are three, each around 20,000 residents. If we assume 18,000 of each of those are "skilled laborers", this adds an additional 52,000 X per day into the economy, and 5,200 X per day into the ninja fund (Assuming 10% ninja rates).
More generally, we can calculate the ninja fund available by using the formula:
Number_Skilled_Laborers x Percentage_Spent_on_Ninja
Which, in this case is:
77,000 x 0.10 = 7,700
So, this means that the total funding to hire ninja missions in Leaf winds up being ~7700 X per day. This is spread out across ~1,500 ninja. This means that the "average" ninja will make ~5 times what a skilled laborer makes, though this is misleading since the majority of ninja are genin. It seems we are in the right ballpark though, so let's continue.
Numbers of Missions Hired
Now, with a way to relate skilled labor (i.e. cost of living) to ninja funds, let's look at missions.
D-rank. This seems to be just unskilled labor available to people who want it. It's unclear to me why a civilian would hire a ninja to do work they can get the local street urchin to do for a fraction of the price, but I guess if you want to show off your wealth, this is probably a good way to do it. Cost is 20 ryo/hour/ninja. I'd imagine that this is paid for by individual shops and citizens, and so will not assume the funding comes from the 7,700 X per day ninja fund.
C-rank. These missions are necessary for intra-country trade, which is likely a thing many skilled labor shops will want. For instance, if they need to go to a guild meeting at a neighboring town, or want to deliver wares, they'll need a C-rank. If skilled laborers want to harvest materials, they may need a C-rank mission to get an escort. I'd imagine most merchant shops need about one every year. We'll further assume each merchant shop is 5 laborers, and that they can often share resources with 10 of their neighbors. This means we'll need a number of C-ranks a year = #laborers/50 = 77,000 / 50 ~ 1540 C ranks / year.
B-rank. These missions are necessary for inter-country trade, which a minority of skilled labor shops will likely want. Other instances of a B-rank mission would be to deal with problems of ninja or chakra beast origin (e.g. a supply point is inhabited by chakra beasts, ninja are suspected to have done something nefarious to a merchant). Most likely, a guild or collection of shops would want to be able to have cash saved to hire a B-rank mission if needed. I'd expect that guilds pay for this via a membership fee. Like insurance. So, let's assume each collection of 100 merchant shops will have the funding to purchase 1 B-rank a year. This means we'll need a number of B-ranks a year of #laborers/100/5 = 77,000 / 500 ~ 154 B ranks / year.
A-rank. These missions are necessary for starting new ventures in new areas with chakra beasts, long term exploratory caravanning, or harming foreign merchants/guilds. I'd expect most established guilds have the funding to purchase one or two A-ranks a year, as they aren't normally needed, but are probably needed whenever expanding. We'll say an established guild is a collection of ~500 merchant shops, and they need one mission every two years. This means we'll have a number of A-ranks equal to #laborers / 500 / 5 = 77,000 / 2,500 ~ 30.8 A ranks / year.
So. According to these assumptions, this means that D-ranks are likely self-funded by affluent skilled laborers, and assumes that C, B, and A rank missions are funded via a 10% membership fee of skilled laborers by their guild. This means that we have a cash inflow of 7700 X per day to pay for 1580 C ranks, 158 B ranks, and 31.6 A ranks each year. So, multiplying 7700 X by 365 to get the yearly funds, we find that the civilians can afford:
~2,800,000 X monies for 1540 C ranks, 154 B ranks, and 30.8 A ranks. So, we now have a formula relating cost of living (X) to mission costs for C, B, and A rank missions.
2800000X = 1540C + 154B + 30.8A
Ninja Mission Relative Cost (risk) Assessment
Our next task is to assign relative costs between C, B, and A rank missions.
Now, given that there are ~1,500 ninja, spending the time to actually achieve all of these missions is likely relatively simple. This means that we'll want to measure the cost in ninja lives, not in ninja time. So, let's estimate risk. The risk for a C rank mission seems like it should be around 1% risk of loss of life - it's either fighting civilians or normal chakra beasts, but normally just escorting and not really doing anything Risk pretty much only comes from misfiled or misidentified C ranks. No ninja combat is to be expected. As the risk of a B rank mission is equivalent to a C-rank that lasts 2 weeks instead of 2 days, let's say instead of a 99% chance of survive, ninja have a (99%)^7 chance of survival. So, a 93.2% chance of survival. This means the risk for a B rank mission is ~7% risk of loss of life. Finally, A rank missions are likely individually specked out, but, if we assume ninja combat is likely, we'll assume a 50% chance of loss of life. So, if we look at things from the mess of survival expectancy above, we can expect a 50% chance of ninja death with either 70 C rank missions, 8 B rank missions, or 1 A rank mission. Obviously, the ninja you send on the mission will matter greatly for survival ratings, but we're just doing ballpark estimates, so these numbers should be roughly right.
So, this indicates at the cost to ninja is approximately 70C = 8 B = 1 A
Plugging this into our equation above for cost of living to ninja missions, we find:
2800000X = 1540C + 154 (8.75 C) + 30.8 (70 C)
2800000X = 5043.5 C
C ~ 555 X
B ~ 4857 X
A ~ 38862 X
So, we would expect one C rank mission to be approximately 600 day's skilled labor daily pay, One B rank mission to be approximately 4,900 day's skilled labor daily pay, and one A rank mission to be approximately 38,900 day's skilled labor daily pay.
Converting to Ryo
Now, we just need to figure out what an average skilled laborer is paid, and we can answer the question proposed. So, let's look at costs of items. We know that ingredients for one loaf of bread costs 30 ryo, and a gallon of honey costs 1,000 ryo, and a copper kettle costs 150 ryo in Iron. Assuming the value of the ryo is relatively similar in Leaf, it seems reasonable to assume a skilled laborer could purchase approximately 5 loaves of bread a day. Obviously, that's not what they're going to spend their money on, but it should be enough to buy a day's food for 2 people (~3 loaves of bread), and have a reasonable chunk of cash left over to pay for things like rent, clothing, and guild fees. This means one day's skilled labor is 150 ryo.
So, X = 150 ryo
C ~ 555 (150 ryo)
C ~ 80,000 ryo
B ~ 4857 (150 ryo)
B ~ 700,000 ryo
A ~ 38862 (150 ryo)
A ~ 5,800,000 ryo
Conclusion
So with the above order of magnitude assumptions, the cost of living at a humble civilian skilled laborer level (i.e. hovel & low quality food) is ~ 150 ryo per day in Leaf, C rank missions should pay ~ 80,000 ryo, B rank missions should pay ~ 700,000 ryo, and A rank missions should pay ~ 6,000,000 ryo. Feel free to use the above formulas with different input values for things like number of skilled laborers, ninja overhead percentage, mission risk assessments, or daily skilled laborer pay to refine values.
