Selling monster parts and corpses?


Homebrew and House Rules

Liberty's Edge

For the most part in my games, the players always want to keep the corpses, fangs, claws, venom and what not of the things they kill to sell them later. It shouldn't be a surprise as they also play Monster Hunter and love the dynamics of creating things out of their spoils...

I always imagine that the higher the CR the more valuable are the parts, but does anyone have some reference table I could use?

Sovereign Court

Not really reference table, depend what kind of world it is. Just take inspiration from the real world, some creatures are hunted for their hide (well this one is kind of easy, dragonhide plate for example), some creatures body parts are used for virility potions or using stuffs like ivory tusks for jewelry or decorations.

Trophy rooms and stuffed animals, magical beasts or monster could be part of some interesting Taxidermist museum or personal collector.

Shadow Lodge

There's unfortunately not a lot of guidelines for this. The important thing is to be as internally consistent as possible, and to account for particularly valuable monster parts in the encounter treasure.

There are basically two reasons that monster parts would be valuable.

1) Aesthetic value (most trophies & taxidermy)

2) Utility, whether mechanical (dragon hides) or magical (unicorn horn).

Parts from higher CR monsters would be harder to get and thus raise price, but parts from benign rare monsters might also be more valuable, and a really useful part of an unremarkable creature could still command a fair price. Unicorns for example aren't all that dangerous but their horns are worth 1,600 gp for magical purposes.

Venom harvested from a monster should count as most or all of the raw material cost for refining that venom into a usable form using Craft (Alchemy).

Dragonhide armour & shields cost twice as much as the masterwork version, so the hide itself should probably be valued about as much as this additional cost for the armour & shield it can produce. Assuming a standard medium sized armour:
--Large dragonhide: 315gp (masterwork hide + shield)
--Huge dragonhide: 550gp (masterwork banded mail + shield)
--Gargantuan dragonhide: 900gp (half-plate + shield)
--Colossal dragonhide: 1800gp (full plate + shield)

Check out talismanic components if you're interested in adding more utility to monster parts.

EDIT: Ultimate Equipment's art objects has a few body parts as well.

Preserved beast head on a plaque: 75gp
Gilded demon skull: 300gp
Gilded dragon skull: 800gp

Of course the latter two should vary based on the type of demon & age of dragon.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

One could arrange a formula based on CR and the suggested treasure per encounter table, with the value increasing or decreasing depending on whether the monster's "treasure" value doubles or has no treasure at all.


I've been wanting to develop something like this. But also involve monster parts that would be usable for magic item creation. Could be a good way to provide some wealth with a creature that doesn't normally carry any.

Ahh, I see that Talismanic Components handles that. I'll have to look that up.

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