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Appendix 1: The Dragon’s Hoard DM: After slaying the mighty dragon, you loot its cavern. After you’ve sold everything, the total treasure value comes to 17,562 gp and 5 sp, including identification and appraisal costs. Players: Yawn. What’s next?
Mialee: So how do you think the dragon got these silver pieces from the kingdom across the sea? Lidda: Never mind that, I’m too busy prying the emeralds out of this granite statue. Jozan: Hey, Tordek, help me carry this platinum-inlaid teakwood table out of here! Tordek: Sure, just let me finish this cask of dwarven ale I found. . . .
COINS The first trick to making a pile of coins seem less generic is to avoid round numbers. After you’ve determined how many thousands, hundreds, or tens of coins of a type are present, reduce the first digit by one (from 6,000 to 5,000, or from 100 to 90). Then replace each remaining zero with the result of a 1d10 roll. Example: The DM rolls 2d6 × 1,000 to determine the number of gold pieces in a hoard and gets a result of 7,000.
Trade Bar Copper Silver Gold Platinum
Value 50 cp 50 sp 50 gp 50 pp
APPENDIX
If you and your players are becoming bored with hoards, it may be time to spice them up with a little more detail. Few players get excited by finding “six gems worth 100 gp each” or, worse yet, “three art objects worth 500 gp apiece.” If you’ve taken the time to craft a unique dragon, take a few more minutes to craft a unique dragon’s hoard. The three basic components of a treasure hoard are coins, goods (gems and art objects), and items (mundane and magic). Within each of these categories, there are plenty of opportunities to spice up what the PCs find. Next time they come across a hoard, here’s what you might hear:
He first reduces this to 6,000, then rolls 1d10 for the hundreds, tens, and ones digits, getting results of 4, 5, and 1. This comes out to 6,451 gp—a nice, nonround number. In the long run, this method slightly reduces the amount of coinage found by the PCs. If you’re worried about this small shrinkage, you can easily add in an item of equivalent value elsewhere in the hoard. For instance, using the example above, you could drop in another item elsewhere in the hoard worth 500 to 600 gp to make up the difference. Another option is to replace the coinage with another form of currency. Particularly for large transactions, coins aren’t a very efficient mode of currency—paper money is easier to transport, and bars or ingots are easier to count. In most medieval fantasy cultures, paper money is a rarity. However, IOUs, letters of credit, or similar “promises of payment” could easily exist, particularly in a mercantile culture. Such an item is literally worth far more than its weight in gold, but can probably only be exchanged in communities of reasonable size. As a rule of thumb, no IOU worth more than a town’s gold piece limit can be exchanged in a community. What’s more, unless you’re trading it to the person who signed it in the first place, you may only be able get one-half its value in coins or goods (this is up to the DM and the situation). Player characters desperate to get full value might end up traveling from city to city in search of the merchant whose name is on the certificate. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the item is genuine (see the Forgery skill, page 74 of the Player’s Handbook), though you should use this sort of plot device sparingly. Bars or ingots of metal are particularly common in societies that deal readily in such goods, such as those of dwarves and gnomes. They typically bear an identifying stamp. A typical trade bar of precious metal weighs 1 pound and is worth 50 coins of the same metal. GP Value 0.5 gp 5 gp 50 gp 500 gp
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