PF2 treasure hoard generator

I cannot find even a single program on the internet that generates a random treasure hoard for me (using the items of the Pathfinder 2 CRB).

Suggestions?

It isn't complete, but we are working on converting a lot of our PF1 generators to PF2 at this web page Link

Loot2 is in progress. Are there any specific functions or features you are looking for?

I wonder what a good way to build it would be?

2E's idea of treasure is based on "what does the party get as a group, over a whole level", and then scattering that a bit across the encounters you've got planned. It's a very top-down plan.

That's quite different from 1E's "each monster has some treasure, and the collected treasure from all those monsters should add up to be the amount you ought to earn in a level", which is bottom-up.

Also 2E has this scheme where you'll typically find 2 permanent on-level and 2 permanent level+1 items, as a party, across a level.

So a loot generator that focused only on a single pile would get into difficulty if you used it across a whole level. For example, when generating loot for a level 4 party you'd be looking for two permanent L4 items and two permanent L5 items. Say two Striking weapons and two +1 armors. But if you cut that up into ten loot drops, how are you gonna get to 2/2 items, and not too few or too many?

That is why I suggest

"Here's random loot for a level"

as a starting point.

Enter 11, get a whole level eleven's worth of stash.

Expand with more options as needed.

Important bits:

* Not having to browse the rulebook and pick loot yourself.
* Hyperlinks hyperlinks and hyperlinks (into Nethys perhaps)

Yeah I think loot for a level is the best approach. Splitting out over encounters is optional, I think that's not really what GMs find the most problematic. Initial selection and gathering links is probably the biggest one.

You could parameterize it a bit maybe, "include items for primal casters" for example. Because you want a significant part (> 60%) of the (non-money) loot to be stuff the players want to keep for at least a few levels.

It doesn't mean that it's always exactly what they wanted (then it'd just be +X runes all the way), but stuff that if they have it, they'd be happy to use.

This should be possible because when you sell stuff you get only half GP value and when you buy things, you're capped by level. Whereas found loot is worth its full value and typically the party finds two level+1 permanent items every level.

To make that more concrete: a level 5 party with a cleric would probably not want to sell a level 6 divine staff that they just found, but might sell a level 6 primal staff so that they can buy another level 5 rune (+1 armor).

Parties can be very varied in class makeup. So we need a bit of parameterization for loot generation, to ensure enough of the loot will be appropriate.

Enter 11, get a whole level eleven's worth of stash.

Expand with more options as needed.

Important bits:

* Not having to browse the rulebook and pick loot yourself.
* Hyperlinks hyperlinks and hyperlinks (into Nethys perhaps)

The entire levels worth of loot is how we planned to do it. Possibly we might break it out into some equal number of stacks if someone wants to do it by encounter.

Not having to look through the rulebook and pick loot will definitely be there.

The hyperlinks may be somewhat more difficult. I'll check with my wife(who has been handling the web scraping portion of the code) and see how easy this is.

@Ascalaphus Your loot priority idea is good. I'll look into how plausible this is for us. Does anyone know of an existing database that breaks stuff out based on what school of magic it is?

EDIT: Should have at least a basic version posted by wednesday evening.

Double EDIT: Does anyone have preferences for including/excluding items by rarity, based on specific adventures, etc?

I would say Rare/Unique items shouldn't be random suggestions, or should be very clearly marked as such.

Sticking at least one uncommon items in a pile is actually very reasonable on the other hand (but should be marked).

I would stick to loot from hardcover books mostly, it would be weird, spoilery and not really all that useful to get loot suggestions from an AP you're not playing.

Start with common items.

Adding uncommon stuff is definitely nice to have - not must have.

Haven't completely finished functionality for it, but the basic version is now available here: Loot2

We will probably add some options like uncommon items or breaking the loot up by encounter. Unfortunately I don't have an easy way to do hyperlinks for each item so that portion is going to have to wait.

Just enter what level you want loot for. If you want something slightly different just hit f5. Hopefully makes life a bit easier.

Any further suggestions always welcome.

Very very cool!

One thing I did notice though, sometimes when you generate a property rune it gives you only the name of the effect rather than saying it is <Effect Name> Rune or something similar. Not a big thing but it was a bit confusing when I first saw it.

Very very cool!

One thing I did notice though, sometimes when you generate a property rune it gives you only the name of the effect rather than saying it is <Effect Name> Rune or something similar. Not a big thing but it was a bit confusing when I first saw it.

Good point. We just stripped the names out of archive of nethys which is why it looks that way. But it will be fairly easy to append the word rune for those items. Should help it be a bit more user friendly. I'll try to get to that tonight.

Thank you for sharing Leitner!

@Perpdepog It now should say Striking/Resilient/Etc runes

@Elorebaen You are most welcome, enjoy!

Looking interesting, but I do have some suggestions for tweaks:

- Display the generated loot as a vertical list, not a run-on thing.
- Maybe categorize it by which of the Table 10-9 columns an item falls under (Permanent Items, Consumables, Currency). So for example this randomly generated list I got for level 5:

320 gold pieces, Goggles of Night, Cold Iron Armor (Low-Grade), Staff of Transmutation, Wand of Hopeless Night (2nd-Level Spell), Dreamtime Tea, Barkskin Potion, Sneaky Key, Sea Touch Elixir (Lesser), Antiplague (Moderate), Mistform Elixir (Moderate)

Might look more like:

Currency

- 320 gold pieces

Permanent Items
- Goggles of Night
- Cold Iron Armor (Low-Grade)
- Staff of Transmutation
- Wand of Hopeless Night (2nd-Level Spell)

Consumables
- Dreamtime Tea
- Barkskin Potion
- Sneaky Key
- Sea Touch Elixir (Lesser)
- Antiplague (Moderate)
- Mistform Elixir (Moderate)

It would also be really neat if you could include the item levels.

Looking interesting, but I do have some suggestions for tweaks:

*formatting*

It would also be really neat if you could include the item levels.

Very good suggestions. I have updated the output to display this way.

Almost sad how much nicer this one looks than the PF1 loot which was a lot more work to create

This is really nice!

The levels make it very easy for a GM to surgically tweak the result, like if you already had a specific level X item in mind that you knew you wanted to include, you can easily pick out which items in the pile you could replace.

Quick suggestion: A prompt for the number of PCs in the party, which would modify the output with more loot if there's more than four players.

If the generator is intended to generate loot for an entire level, it would be nice if it was randomly distributed into 4-5 sub-packets. Not that it would be too difficult for a DM to divide up the loot into subpackets himself. In the past, I have always done some post-editing with rando loot generators or shop inventory generators.

Very cool tool Leitner! What would help me personally is the stuff you don't see on AoN or Pathbuilder: scrolls and wands of specific spells. These were very helpful for me when playing PF1. Do you think there would be a way to add those?

Lot of good ideas here.

@xcmt We can absolutely do that. I'll try to get to that this weekend or so.

@wheldrake Definitely plan to do this. Shouldn't be too hard.

@Lawrencelot That is certainly on the radar, but it will take a bit longer. It isn't a great interim solution but we do have a pathfinder 1 version that does that here: Consumables there are a lot of shared spells between the versions so it might work decently.

Or if you want to run it quite a few times for quick results you could use the PF1 loot generator and specify consumables: loot

Ascalaphus wrote:

Looking interesting, but I do have some suggestions for tweaks:

*formatting*

It would also be really neat if you could include the item levels.

Very good suggestions. I have updated the output to display this way.

Almost sad how much nicer this one looks than the PF1 loot which was a lot more work to create

To be fair to you guys, PF1's loot isn't as neatly categorized from the get-go in terms of level and cost and the like than PF2's is. It seems like having everything be more obviously leveled as opposed to assigning a pseudo-level based on cost helps a lot.

Also I am loving how this tool is shaping up; definitely bookmarking for when I run a game.

Leitner, this is really cool. Thanks for sharing this!

In terms of including enough "core" permanent items; maybe set it up so that if the possibilities for a given level (2, 4, 5, 8 etc) include a fundamental weapon or armor rune, that one of the two items will be guaranteed to be that rune/an item with that rune on it?

Wow, this got even better, really quickly! Thanks Leit!

Unfortunately I don't have an easy way to do hyperlinks for each item so that portion is going to have to wait.

Could you explain a bit more what the problem is?

Instead of outputting (on the page)

Level 4 Alchemist Goggles (just an example)

You would vastly increase the utility of your program by doing

Level 4 Alchemist Goggles (https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=408)

or even

Level 4 Alchemist Goggles

Sure this is BB Code and not HTML, but am I missing something, or isn't it trivial to implement links on a HTML page?

In terms of including enough "core" permanent items; maybe set it up so that if the possibilities for a given level (2, 4, 5, 8 etc) include a fundamental weapon or armor rune, that one of the two items will be guaranteed to be that rune/an item with that rune on it?

To be fair to Leitner, that's not part of the treasure guidelines.

Not that it wouldn't useful. Just that optional/variant improvements should take a back seat to implementing the core functionality in my opinion.

Very cool tool Leitner! What would help me personally is the stuff you don't see on AoN or Pathbuilder: scrolls and wands of specific spells. These were very helpful for me when playing PF1. Do you think there would be a way to add those?

Yes, if the tool eventually ends up randomizing specific weapons and spells that'd be GREAT.

That is, instead of outputting
3rd level scroll
+1 striking weapon

It would be so much nicer if it said
Agonizing Despair, Scroll (3rd level Occult)
+1 striking Light Mace

The GM would then understand that she could easily switch out the specific spell or weapon - just that getting a specific suggestion is often much more useful than a mere "any 3rd level spell".

- Maybe categorize it by which of the Table 10-9 columns an item falls under (Permanent Items, Consumables, Currency).

Including the page reference would be good.

Simple things like CRB page 456 or LOCG page 123

If Nethys is hyperlinked, this info is available there, but that obviously doesn't help if you print out your magic item list, and play where there are no computers or phones. :)

@Perpdepog Lol, very true and thanks for the kind words. The magic enhancement/special material combos were what really kicked my butt for PF1. I hope it helps your GMing a ton!

@Cintra Bristol Our pleasure! Glad you like it.

@Ascalaphus This should be do-able. I'll see if I can take a look this weekend when I am working on variable party sizes.

@Elorebaen Lot of great ideas here. Can't take much credit on our end.

@Zapp The issue with the hyperlinks is probably the way we are getting the information off of AoN. My wife did a webscrapper that pulls stuff from this page https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?All=true With that we sort each item into a list with the information we care about(I.E. drop bulk, traits, etc fields)

And example would be ['Addiction Suppressant (Lesser)', 'Rare', 'Alchemical Items', '1', '—'], ['Lock (Simple)', 'Common', 'Adventuring Gear', '1', '—']

Final - being the spoiler tag.

From there I am sorting/filtering the stuff. Removing anything that isn't common, has a spoiler tag, isn't at least level 1 and then breaking it into separate lists based on consumable/permenant and level. Once everything is sorted properly I am just adding the item names into the options.

The URL of the item is never returned. And the only way I currently see to do it would be manually add one to each item. I'm sure there is a way to do it efficiently, but it currently seems beyond our skill level. Neither of us are professional programmers, doing this mostly as a hobby.

The specific spells and possible magic items are something we are looking at doing in the future. A lot of the logic is already done using the prior consumables and loot1 programs. So hopefully we can get that up and running soonish.

Ascalaphus wrote:

In terms of including enough "core" permanent items; maybe set it up so that if the possibilities for a given level (2, 4, 5, 8 etc) include a fundamental weapon or armor rune, that one of the two items will be guaranteed to be that rune/an item with that rune on it?

To be fair to Leitner, that's not part of the treasure guidelines.

Not that it wouldn't useful. Just that optional/variant improvements should take a back seat to implementing the core functionality in my opinion.

I think it's more in between the lines, but you definitely see some nudges towards it on CRB page 510 when discussing reasons for adjusting treasure or giving out treasure of nonstandard levels.

The GMG is more forthcoming on page 38 where it advises on the rate of "core" vs. other items to put in loot piles, influenced by how easily PCs could get core items in other ways such as crafting or shopping.

As you choose treasure, look at the flow of treasure in the campaign, and see which PCs are ahead and which are behind. It’s usually best to mix “core items,” treasure linked to a PC’s main abilities, with treasure that has unusual, less broadly applicable powers. For instance, a champion might not purchase plate armor of the deep, but they will likely wear it if they find it. These items should always be useful—a party without a primal spellcaster won’t have much use for an animal staff. The number of core items to give out depends partly on how much the campaign allows for crafting and buying items.

* If there are few limits on buying items and there’s plenty of time to craft, make about half the permanent items you give out core items. The PCs have plenty of ways to obtain the items they want.

* If purchasing items and obtaining formulas is somewhat difficult, make about three-fourths of the permanent items core items. If a PC really wants an item, they might have to do extra work to get it.

* If there are no magic item shops or other ways to purchase items and formulas, make all the permanent items core items. In this case, it might work better for your game to use Automatic Bonus Progression to eliminate the need for core items.

As you see, the rate is between 50% and 100%, depending on the campaign structure.

Whew, that took a bit more work than expected. But everything should be working satisfactorily now. If anyone has been trying to use the generator in the last hour or so I apologize if you got some weird looking results.

New and improved loot

I'm very happy with it. The party size 4-6 and mandatory rune options are in. And I'd like to thank everyone for giving great formatting and functionality suggestions.

I'll be taking a break off this one for a bit, but let me know if any minor changes are needed or bugs are encountered.

As a minor note, I added a 6th consumable to level 1. It was a royal pain in the butt to put so many exceptions for the output just because level 1 has 5 and each other level has 6. But feel free to remove 1 consumable from the level 1 loot piles if it is an issue.

Just a quick update here, the program should now output a specific scroll. So instead of "1st level scroll" it should now read something like Arcane scroll of magic missile worth 4gp

I hope you advertise your generator far outside this forum, so everybody who plays PF2 becomes aware of it!

That's a great tool! Looks like it has really come of age. I will definitely use it in my home games.

Thanks for your efforts.

Thanks! We certainly love to see that sort of feedback.

@Zapp My wife posts updates on the pathfinder 2 reddit, not sure off hand of any other good places to share it. If anyone has other locations we'd be happy to spread the word. If you mean something like search engine optimization so it shows up more prominently on goggle we've looked into it, although haven't quite figured that piece out yet.