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<small>|-| colspan="3" class="foot" |1. Includes more influential administrators.<br/>
→The Service Economy: The Profession Rules Don't Work: table
People who have a profession don't make checks to make money, they get a ''wage'' if they happen to have a job. The wage will depend on what kind of work they are doing (so no, you can't put 10 ranks into Profession: Janitor and be better paid than the magistrate). Characters are assumed to make a wage approximately similar to the one in the table below if they are working and have an appropriate professional skill. DMs may allow a character to put two ranks into a single Profession skill and be a "master ''whatever''". Such characters may be able to boast about their skills or perhaps even make more money. The important part is that this means that you can find really good scullery maids who don't have a +5 BAB. Young children can often be drafted to do grown-up jobs, and need only be paid 1/10th the normal rate for whatever it is that you have them doing. Child labor is cheap, but in some ways you get what you pay for and children may become distracted or sick before completing important or dangerous jobs.
{| class="zebra d20" style="width: 100%;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"
|+ Professions and their Pay Scale
|-
| valign="top" style="width: 34%;" |
{| class="zebra column" style="width: 100%;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"
|-
! Profession !! Wage/Week
|-
| Groom || 1 GP
|}
| valign="top" style="width: 33%;" |
{| class="zebra column" style="width: 100%;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"
|-
! Profession !! Wage/Week
|-
| Guard || 15 SP+
|-
| Sailor || 2 GP
|}
| valign="top" style="width: 33%;" |
{| class="zebra column" style="width: 100%;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"
|-
! Profession !! Wage/Week
|-
| Scribe || 2 GP
| Wage Mage || 10 GP+
|}
2. Farmers also feed themselves.<br/>
3. This means no profession at all.<br/>
4. Any skilled profession that is based on one of the ten Knowledge skills in D&D is a Sage, and is not handled with the Profession skill at all. An Architect does not have "Profession: Sage", he has Knowledge: Architecture and Engineering. The pay scale of a Sage of any kind is extremely dependent upon his skill results. A character with four or five ranks in a couple of knowledges might pull down 10 GP per week, but a character who can regularly make a DC 30 check in any subject no matter how arcane can pull down the big bucks. Assuming of course that he can find someone that actually needs his services.</small>|}
Some professons are actually dependent upon class level and abilities. A 1st level Wage Mage commands a wage of 10 GP a week to sit around and cast 1st level spells and cantrips from time to time, but a 12th level Wizard would command an earnings per week so large that most kingdoms find it more expedient to simply make such magicians part of the government.
Just because you selected a profession that makes a lot of money doesn't mean that anyone will hire you. Generally only relatively organized areas actually have economies that even can hire Butlers and Clerks. But just because there is work available in an area doesn't mean that there's work available ''for you''. Even in major cities there aren't a whole lot of jobs for a clerk or a barrister, so the competition for those jobs is pretty stiff. Prospective employers are fairly choosy about who they select for such employment, and they'll usually go to guilds (whose reputation is on the line every time they vouch for someone) or their own aristocratic family members rather than hire some random Half-Orc who claims to have the requisite skills.
== Running a Business ==
