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I'm building a treasure generator, using the rules laid out in the Core book, and it'll also be highly configurable. Just wondering about misc treasure items, stuff like armor, weapons, etc.
So far, when mundane gear comes up as a portion of treasure, then often i get things like 3000 clay jugs or 500 shields. Does this strike anyone as ridiculous? Of course, if you don't like a given result, it's simple enough to generate a brand new one.
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not sure how your coding it, so it may or may not work, but a cap based on item might be a good idea. 3000 clay jugs would be odd, but 57 of them in a dungeon pantry wouldn't be...
perhaps some way to override the quantity and send it back to get more items to fill the count... change 3000 to 57 and it goes back and adds 6423 spoons... hummm, lets make that 84 spoons... so then it goes and grabs something else to fill the GP gap...
again, without more specifics of the workings it's hard to give suggestions.
not sure how your coding it, so it may or may not work, but a cap based on item might be a good idea. 3000 clay jugs would be odd, but 57 of them in a dungeon pantry wouldn't be...
The quantity would also depend on the room's purpose as well as whomever the occupant was. Several hundred clay jugs inside an abandoned kitchen in a keep wouldn't be out of place but probably would look funny inside an old barracks.
The core book recommends limiting mundane treasure to 1000 gp or less, but if you group armor & weapons as mundane items, then this 1k gold limit could be too low. Especially if this generator should come up with items like non-magical bejeweled breastplates and the like.
I'm building this tool in Excel. As soon as I get it finished, I'll furnish a link for dl'ing.
I'm making quite a bit of progress on this project. It's taken much longer than I expected, but it should come in very handy for impromptu encounters, like if you get those a lot via sandbox campaigns. Right now, it will generate a variety of trade goods, mundane gear, jewelry, gems, coins, and any magic item (except for armor & cursed. those are the last items).
I've got a rules question, just to verify my math. The generator will create various items of different sizes and materials. The question I've got is if I'm coming up with the costs correctly.
For example (and this is a ridiculous example), a Nunchaku costs 2 gp and weighs 2 lbs. But, if it's made of mithral AND is sized for a tiny humanoid, how much would it cost?
I'm coming up with 52 gp. Mithral adds 500 gp/lb, but this object at a Tiny size would weigh .2 lbs and mithral objects weigh half normal, so it's down to .1 lbs. (.1 X 500) + 2, the base item cost, = 52.
Have I got that right?
Thanks, all, for the suggestions! It's good to know there's interest in the work. I'll make this tool available as soon as it's ready.
I'm no expert but it seems right to me its just when you get into enchantments and the like that you start adding large sums with no modification as in those Nunchaku as a +1 weapon would cost 1052GP. 52GP may seem low for a mithril item but its still something like 25 times the cost of a non-mithral one. Of course its not really worth making something that light out of Mithral but you could do it.
Mundane, or non-magical, weapons & armor can be made out of special materials. See pg 154 of the CRB. Of course, magical weapons & armor are constructed from special materials, too ... and this generator I'm building will randomly create examples of both.
I agree that typically no-one will ever need or want a tiny sized mithral nunchaku, but now that that thought is in my head, I can see a formation of ninja pixies flying straight for my PCs ...
Quick update: it's nearly finished! I need to add Cursed Items, and I definitely need to debug 'Armor' as a magic item option. There's also a few quirky items that need some customization, like shield spikes. I'm not sure if it's really worth it to fool with those though.
However, mission creep has settled in. There's several other things I've found useful and so I'm bundling them up into this tool:
- time tracker, which will also display customizable lunar phases and tracks any custom event you may need (like reminders about disease saves, villain spell durations,etc); it also displays custom names for days of the week and for month names.
- a simple random encounter generator, that would be tied to the time tracker, so that reminders about any wandering monsters automatically show up in a list of future events
- a random generator for Arcane KNO rolls about monsters: I really like this one, cause I've added text for flavor. So, instead of telling a player that a given monster has fire resistance, the text may say something like 'The famous elven explorer Altanith describes seeing raw flames lick the hide of the beast to no effect'. The script on this will take several random known tidbits, add them to a single string, and then copy them to the Windows clipboard. It's handy cause then I can simply paste as a 'Whisper' to a specific player(s) in Maptool.
- a weather generator, which, ye gods, shouldn't be so difficult. This piece has proven to be a general pain in the you-know-where, but doggone it, I want random weather to go with the random encounters. I hate it when players complain 'oh, why are you doing this to us?'. Yeah, you could just pick the weather, but my preference is to say that the chips fall where they may. So, why has this piece been so painful? There's several reasons why, which could make a post of its own, but mainly cause weather is boring. For the most part, it has little mechanical effect, but when a nasty storm blows through, I want all the reminders about those effects close at hand.
- I also want a piece to help with overland movement, that would take terrain, weather effects, and the presence/absence of trails & roads into account. This shouldn't be terribly difficult to add, but it would tie into the weather piece.
I know there's a few sites out there that do some of this stuff, but what I'm building is a single tool that will handle a lot of mundane stuff that I had been tracking in several different files.
Weellll, I haven't actually put anything in to come up with random terrain details like campsites. Certainly, that's doable. What you've got in mind sounds like the tables on pages 224 - 225 of the GMG - things on the roadside, scenic spots, etc. So, good thought ... I could certainly add these things. And, the list itself is editable, so new stuff can always be thrown in there.
As far as mundane treasures, anything that is indicated as being size-able or subject to different materials will get those variables. So, yes, shields can be small, large, tiny, etc., as well as made of darkwood, mithral, etc.
I don't have anything in there about broken or useless items, but that's not a bad idea. Essentially, an item could have the broken condition and perhaps mend-able via a Craft or some sort of Profession check?
Yes, when you mention 'mundane details', you really nailed it. I want something to handle the boring minute details, like weather, that are always in the background, so that when they're important, the players can't accuse me of 'making that up'.
