Keradi01's page

So in preparation of running a game for my family, I have been running a few scenarios on my own just to see how I would handle certain situations.

I ended up having a character wipe out an opposing army and marching her army onto the settlement the army was protecting. She is a necromancer so she just killed everyone who didn't already run away.

So I had gotten to the point where a character could amass a small (technically tiny) army, overpower a slightly larger army, and attack a settlement. All was good until I realized that the character would want to see what valuables the settlement had. That has left me pretty stumped.

The settlement itself is a rather small village, whats more it is a village of gnolls (well now they are mostly zombies with some skeletons). So I was wondering how to determine just the kind of stuff that can be salvaged. Even so, how should I determine this sort of stuff in other situations (bigger/smaller settlements, different races, etc.).

I know I could just come up with some random amount, maybe play with a few randomized tables and the like, but in a situation where the players could have armies attack settlements for personal gain, I feel that I need to have some kind of system to quickly and fairly determine loot.

Giving treasure equivalent to the encounter seems weird when dealing with the possessions of an army of low CR creatures and even then that doesn't take into account that the settlement would possess wealth not owned by the army that made up most of its population. I can see simplifying the rewards as being BP, but even then I'm not sure how to determine how much could (or should) be looted from a settlement.

So yeah, to sum up my request for advice: If a character manages to wipe out/drive away a settlement's population, how should I determine the amount of valuables or other rewards that can be taken, based on the settlement's size, population, and demographics.

I was afraid of getting those answers. So it is true then, I can effectively rule out literally anything that someone could sell for any amount of gold and the whims of the invisible hand of the market determine what can be made and where.

Well, at least I can take comfort in being GM and not worrying about this limitation.

So I look at polymorph any object (and plenty of other spells but this question is just about that one) and I see a line of text that is clearly there to protect the balance of the game in some measure; "This spell cannot create material of great intrinsic value, such as copper, silver, gems, silk, gold, platinum, mithral, or adamantine. It also cannot reproduce the special properties of cold iron in order to overcome the damage reduction of certain creatures."

That doesn't even mean anything because there is no solid definition of great intrinsic value, and that intrinsic value itself has more than one definition, all of which seem to imply that it is something that is perceived about the subject in question. I can tell you the atomic mass and density of iron, but how am I supposed to know if it has too great of an intrinsic value to make from polymorph any object (other than how it is implied that a character can make cold iron, just without a specific property it has).

Could someone please clarify what that line about great intrinsic value means? Because given enough time, I imagine anyone could make up a fairly logical explanation as to how literally anything is too great of an intrinsic value to create since there does not seem to be a solid baseline showing what is too great (and I don't buy that saying copper, silver, gems, gold, silk, platinum, mithral, or adamantine is a solid baseline because most of those are only of value because they are used as currency/are luxuries without any significant use other than being pleasant materials and the last two just happen to be made expensive mainly due to having properties that are better for making armor and weapons than iron).