Ultimate Equipment Preview: Are You My Mummy?!

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Valeros slashed out desperately with both of his blades as he pushed back away from the trio of mummies that had emerged from the darkened crypt. Ancient, ensorcelled bandages fell to the floor in a cloud of dust as the arm of one of the horrors was severed at the elbow. Apparently uncaring of the grievous wound, the mummy continued to shamble forward, reaching out with its remaining hand as it tried to find the warrior's throat. Valeros continued to backpedal, but suddenly pitched over onto his back, his foot stumbling over one of the many canopic jars that littered the floor.

Quite suddenly, Merisiel emerged from the shadows and drove the blade of her rapier through the first mummy's head just as it was reaching down to finish off Valeros. As the undead thing collapsed to the floor, Merisiel extended her hand to help the fighter off the floor.

"There had better be some valuable treasure in this tomb" she said with a wink before turning to face the remaining mummies.

Merisiel, and all of you players and GMs out there, are sure to get all the valuable treasure you need in just 4 weeks with the release of Ultimate Equipment. Each week, leading up to the book's release, we are going to be showing off a sample treasure haul from this mighty tome. Up this week, the loot from a CR 8 encounter with a trio of mummies.

Mummies, being undead, can have a wide variety of treasure types. Since we have 5,000 gp to spend on treasure for this encounter, I think we will give out something from Treasure Type F: Combatant Gear and a little something from Treasure Type C: Art Objects. Undead don't usually have art objects, but it makes sense for this encounter and the treasure types are flexible in this way.

Treasure Type F: Combatant Gear
4,000 gp Reward (total value 3,705 gp)
mithril shirt, masterwork longspear, buffering cap, potion of remove paralysis

Treasure Type C: Art Objects
1,000 gp Reward (total value 1,200 gp)
gold mask (worth 450 gp), gold-and-platinum statue of a deity (worth 750 gp)

Not a bad haul for one encounter, and you can easily picture one of the mummies wearing the mask, while the other valuables are located in the tomb itself, with the statue as the center point of the room. You could even put the statue on some sort of trap, which might give you the opportunity to add even more treasure to the encounter. One of the great things about this book is that sometimes the charts and tables can give you ideas to flesh out the encounter and add an extra level of detail to the surroundings. After all, the players always pay attention to the loot.

Well, that's all for this week. Next week, our brave heroes will be facing off against a fire giant and his hell hound minions!

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer