Basic D&D's treasure types are more than a little quirky. They're easy enough to reference in play, but choosing among them is tricky. Is there any rhyme or reason to them?
My starting reference is Necrotic Gnome's excellent Old School Essentials wiki, which lists all 22 treasure types from B/X. Types A through O are "hoards", types P-T are individual coin purses, and U and V are group treasure. The wiki also helpfully lists their average payout values.
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| Throw a coin to your.. oh nevermind |
Treasure density seemed a really good way to look at treasure types. My average treasure values are slightly different from Gnome's because I put in placeholder values for magical items. Rightly or wrongly, I used these values:
- Magical item, 50ct, 300gp
- Magical item (weapons, shield, or armor), 100ct, 300gp
- Magical item (not armaments), 20ct, 300gp
- Scrolls 1ct, 100gp
- Potions 10ct, 100gp
Here's what I found (click to expand):
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| B/X Treasure Type Avg. Value vs. Weight |
Among the hoards, treasure type I stands out for high-density, portable riches: just platinum, gems, and jewellery. Strangely, I can't find any monsters that have it as treasure!
Treasure type J, "kobold slag" so heavy for its value that it's barely worth taking.
Types L, N and O are outliers among the hoards because they're just a bunch of gems, potions and scrolls, respectively.
Individual treasures, P, Q, R, S, and T are just coins of varying value; they form an orderly line up toward type L (gems).
Group treasure type V (favored by bears, great cats and lizards for some reason) is the high-density good stuff. It's almost as valuable as hoard type C, but is nearly 100x more dense.
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Okay, that's useful for comparing treasure types, but what's appropriate for a given monster? How hard does B/X make you work to get treasure from monsters? In the next post, I'll be looking at how much XP worth of monsters you have to defeat (in whatever way) to get that sweet, sweet loot.
This makes a lot of sense if you remember to track weights on players during a session. It's something I am terrible at as a GM but very interested in making a videogame about...
ReplyDeleteMost of the hoards aren't too bad. A through F could be carried by five half-laden adventurers. On the other hand, an average type H hoard is more than three tons!
DeleteWhy would it be the GM's responsibility?
DeleteI assume Brent is referring to applying that rule in play, not tracking who is carrying what. (In OSE and B/X encumbrance is optional.)
DeleteRegarding magic item, since they do not provide experience points their weight is likely unimportant. You must “recover” monetary treasure (which we always read as “get the treasure back to town”) for it to count as XP (p B22). Maybe treasure weight vs XP of the monsters defeated is part of it? I wonder how much of a relationship there is between XP value of individual monsters (or average horde), number of individuals in a lair, and potential GP value of hoard?
ReplyDeleteI have crunched those exact numbers and will post it all tomorrow!
Delete"Group treasure type V (favored by bears, great cats and lizards for some reason) is the high-density good stuff."
ReplyDeleteI'm not familiar with the details of V but when I read this my first thought was that dense treasure from large animals = scat after eating adventures.