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I can understand that one, though Vamps, fiends, and dragons I'd think are pretty big type monsters that would require a lot of story reason to show up and want to kill. What about in the earlier levels? like in the current new game they are tailing an Orc warband. They don't care about gold because they wouldn't be let into any town anyway, and their weapons are mostly uniform (regular masterwork) that aren't worth all that much. The players are complaining that I don't give them enough loot to improve their characters beyond leveling and I keep having to tell them that the orcs wouldn't have those things, and so they want to stop progressing the story to do something else to gain coin (I wouldn't even know what would make sence for that), which time wouldn't allowIf you can't make sense of something to drop a lot of loot, don't have it drop loot.
However, make sure you fit in creatures with more loot than usual as a counterbalance.
For example: the party fights a bunch of werewolves, who have precious little need of most items so they have minimal loot. However, not long after they come across a vampire who wants to appear suave and sophisticated, and as such has amassed a great deal of wealth. He has much more treasure than the book would indicate for a vampire, enough to make up for the werewolves having little to none.
Vampires, dragons, fiends, and humanoids all tend to work well for this.
The orcs don't make things for themselves, so they're likely to have TAKEN shiny things from the last village they raided. Not to spend at any place, to to have. There's also the option of said orcs having a prisioner that's say a rich merchant's child, and the father rewards the party handsomly for saving his beloved little child.
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Here's what I do. I happen to be cooking an adventure at the moment so I can give a living example.
1: Player count and total gold dispersal. Generally speaking, I like to avoid them going out of control, so I go by 80% to allow me room to toss in unquantified awesomethings of my own creation. Say 4 players, 3,600 gold in 'material'.
Here's the big part...
Half of that value I embed in the terrain. I make my players very well aware that knowledge, proffession, and other 'min/max' "Trash" skills are profitable. Everything from reliefs, architecture, random stray books that may be laying about, paintings, small scupltures, etc. The dungeon would have about 1,800GP in stuff that would otherwise have no value except to those of particular proffessions. A rubbing of an elven relief painting or a mural from a lost dwarven fortification? Small gold mines for the appraising eye.
These are things that are not immediately quantifiable. I just make note of what they find, and it's up to them to find people who value their finds. Maybe it's a blacksmith hard up for scrap metal. There'll be bits of scrap strewn about in all sorts of places. Maybe it's a pile of old books where a few of them may be of some academic significance to someone somewhere. Etc. Min/Maxed and one-trick-wonders will find themselves modestly poor if they go by whatever they get off kills. I find this to keep their power in check, and try to get them more engaged in their environment other than waiting for the next initiative roll. There may be some red herrings here and there, such as a skunked keg of ancient dwarven ale, but generally, there are things to take home for the appraising eyes. I can gauge this value as I please at a later time to adjust for how the players are doing.
That leaves a very modest 1,800-2,400GP in articles to seed into more direct forms of loot. Immediately, close to half that go into consumables and mundane articles that can be repurposed into serviceable condition (torn chainmail, bent swords of exceptional quality, etc). So 900-1,200GP is enough for a few permanent magical trinkets. This I'll usually decide on the fly for whoever's having the worse luck of the session. I wouldn't tell them that, of course. A find is a find, congratulations lucky bastard.
The worst thing to do is "feed" players loot via combat and allow them to 'meet their GP quotas' that way. Most combat should be as fruitless as it is challenging, leveraging the good stuff in more reasonable (or entertainingly random, as I prefer) locations.
So.. how am I breaking down that 'embedded' loot?
Well.. lessee..
400gp in assorted blacksmith scrap metal (Prof:blacksmith/appraisal)
5x80GP reliefs (rubbings) (Appraisal/Prof:Scribe)
1x100gp ancient historical account (book) (knowledge:history)
1x100gp Abjurer research journal (knowledge:arcana)
4x100gp relief art/statue (sketch) (Prof: Engineering/history/scribe)
75gp copper chicken sculpture (appraisal)
1x100gp historical account (prof:soldier/scribe)
That's about 1500gp right there easy enough. These are things that can help add details to an environment, as well as a supplemental source of income. Remember, Players should be -interacting- with the environment. Don't look. Touch.
Here's what I do. I happen to be cooking an adventure at the moment so I can give a living example.
1: Player count and total gold dispersal. Generally speaking, I like to avoid them going out of control, so I go by 80% to allow me room to toss in unquantified awesomethings of my own creation. Say 4 players, 3,600 gold in 'material'.
Here's the big part...
Half of that value I embed in the terrain. I make my players very well aware that knowledge, proffession, and other 'min/max' "Trash" skills are profitable. Everything from reliefs, architecture, random stray books that may be laying about, paintings, small scupltures, etc. The dungeon would have about 1,800GP in stuff that would otherwise have no value except to those of particular proffessions. A rubbing of an elven relief painting or a mural from a lost dwarven fortification? Small gold mines for the appraising eye.
These are things that are not immediately quantifiable. I just make note of what they find, and it's up to them to find people who value their finds. Maybe it's a blacksmith hard up for scrap metal. There'll be bits of scrap strewn about in all sorts of places. Maybe it's a pile of old books where a few of them may be of some academic significance to someone somewhere. Etc. Min/Maxed and one-trick-wonders will find themselves modestly poor if they go by whatever they get off kills. I find this to keep their power in check, and try to get them more engaged in their environment other than waiting for the next initiative roll. There may be some red herrings here and there, such as a skunked keg of ancient dwarven ale, but generally, there are things to take home for the appraising eyes. I can gauge this value as I please at a later time to adjust for how the players are doing.
That leaves a very modest 1,800-2,400GP in articles to seed into more direct forms of loot. Immediately, close to half that go into consumables and mundane articles that can be repurposed into serviceable condition (torn chainmail, bent swords of...
I like everything you're saying here! Please give a sum up of how you tell the players to loot the envirionment using skills. Do you just paint the picture (there's a faded mural on the wall) and then make them roll the skill or did you train them a long time ago and now they just do it?
I'm asking because I run a lot of dungeon crawls in my current campaign and I have a really hard time making the players interact with the environment. I feel like treasure done this way would be one more way to not only create immersion for the experience but also make the dungeon environment come alive for the players. I have a guy running a PC with Craft: Cartography and another PC in the campaign has Craft: Bowyer so including perhaps old, dog-eared maps or warped bows that just need a good Make Whole spell (in the party's wheelhouse FYI) to be valuable again would be really cool!
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Now you've got me curious, Ashiel: How do you handle that kind of cannibalization in terms of value and divisibility? If they were to find, say, a Ring of Protection +5 (50,000 GP buy price), would you let them use the full 50,000 worth or treat it as if they'd sold it for half, so 25,000?
And how would you handle them trying to make, say, a bunch of 3rd-level Runestones of Power from that ring? Each is 9,000 to craft, so could they chip in 2k gold and make three of them from one ring (if they get 25,000 from it; if it's 50,000 chip in 4k and make six of them).
i think you have to make it sell for half, or put major time restraints on crafting, because if you gives players all the time in the world, and the items they find can be turned into other items for their full value they essentially have infinite money
for example they take a +4 nat armor craft it into a +5 with 7000 gold left over
Yes, we do the same in our game and you recover the sale value from cannibalized magic items. Flavour-wise, it either comes down to disenchanting an item and collecting some kind of "arcane residue" off it, or else you're removing gemstones, melting down precious metals, etc which you then re-build into a new item.
I like everything you're saying here! Please give a sum up of how you tell the players to loot the envirionment using skills. Do you just paint the picture (there's a faded mural on the wall) and then make them roll the skill or did you train them a long time ago and now they just do it?
I'm asking because I run a lot of dungeon crawls in my current campaign and I have a really hard time making the players interact with the environment. I feel like treasure done this way would be one more way to not only create immersion for the experience but also make the dungeon environment come alive for the players. I have a guy running a PC with Craft: Cartography and another PC in the campaign has Craft: Bowyer so including perhaps old, dog-eared maps or warped bows that just need a good Make Whole spell (in the party's wheelhouse FYI) to be valuable again would be really cool!
You have to start training them to think this way. If you're adopting this mid-campaign, this is a bit harder. Don't force them to roll anything, but simply ask 'So does anyone have XXX skill? No? okay...".
They should notice a very, very, very sharp drop in their rewards for running an adventure, because you've pretty much relocated half their stuff into interaction checks. They may become perturbed and start perma-Detect and stuff for the next adventure. Keep denying them easy stuff, and keep asking for knowledge, appraisal, or proffession checks and looking disappointed. When confronted, simply let them know. "Remember that blah-blah, and that blah-blah? And that time I asked if anyone had an Appraise skill? Your stuff was there. You just lacked the talent, knowledge, and skills to see it." Suggest a few ranks in a profession or appraise, and maybe a few relevant items for the next time they level up. Reward that.
If you ask for these skills, hopefully, someone will at least have the Appraise skill. If so, you're lucky. This will suddenly start to pay off, and they'll start using it more, and you can graciously suggest different skill checks for it. They'll get the idea once they whiff that suddenly those 'useless' profession skills will net them money if they investigate their surroundings.
This requires some special tuning on your part. You're the only one who knows what these items are worth, and you should keep them secret until they start looking for buyers. Get an idea of how much of this stuff they're finding in general, and increase their worth appropriately so that they start keeping pace.
Basic greed should steer them in the right direction once they get a whiff of where and how the money is hidden. Maybe what they find isn't money, but a story hook instead. Now things get interesting. Apply this sparingly. Too many hooks and not enough bait and people stop biting the bait.
Use details in these items and the environment descriptions to help tell a story of 'what once was' in the case of old construction, ruins, dungeons, and the like. Use these details to form questions. Perhaps they find an old deserted dwarven outpost. Use the details to build questions like 'why are they gone' and 'why where they here'.
Give players plenty of quiet time to contend with hazards and traps laid in their wake to mull over these things, and avoid extensive combat-heavy engagements until after these things have had time to settle in. Keep it light in terms of direct combat, but not totally out of character. Once they have something important in their heads or hands, then it's time to turn up the heat.
Transor-Z: I'm pickin up what you're putting down here. I imagine the PCs coming into, say a 5-room dungeon layout built from an ancient tomb. The construction is old and gothic; the plotline of the adventure is basically that a moronic bandit stumbled on this tomb and opened it, getting killed in the process. Now the malevolent undead inside, cursed into reanimation out of a sense of martial failure, has begun campaigning through the countryside slaying the living and assembling more wights like the master of the tomb.
So the tomb might have some obvious burial treasure, like coins and goods for the dead to carry into the next world. But also you might have:
Banners of the Ancient Lord - a crimson pennant, trimmed in gold with the crest of a black wolf and tower (Profession: Soldier, Knowledge: History, Appraise)
Wrought-Iron Candle Stands - these gothic sculptures are cobwebbed and riddled with crusted wax drippings but their ornate construction reveals powerful craftsmanship (Appraise, Craft: Blacksmith)
Relief of the Oathsworn Company - the three-pannel carving depicts a glorious battle of a bygone age (Profession: Soldier, Knowledge: History, Appraise)
Weapons Cache - an armory of dozens of extra weaponry lays here. Though age and the elements have affected many spells and hard work might be employed to reveal the elder skills and techniques that went into their construction (Craft: Weaponsmith, Knowledge: History, Appraise)
I could imagine other stuff too, like maybe the journals of the company's conquests, perhaps some arcane materia entombed with the ancient lord's second-in-command (skeleton champion wizard) or some ornamental shields displaying the crests of the vanquished.
All of the treasure hearkens back to the time of this lord and helps tells his story. He was a great general but over time his power waned. When a young rival(monster, witch, evil dragon etc) came to challenge him he was beaten back and fled into his own tomb where he slew all of his loyal retainers and then himself out of desperation. He reanimated as did his "Oathsworn Company" and now they terorize the region seeking vengeance or final peace.