I was planning one of the BBEG for the campaign i'm running (house-made) and ran into something i didn't think could be an obstacle.
The evil boss in particular is a great wyrm red dragon CR22; once i finished his stats i began working on his treasure, but found the corebook gives very little details on how to design dragon's hoards (or how to design every treasure to tell the truth).
The rules only give the medium gold value of a given treasure for a given encounter's CR and then you have to decide how much is money, how much is art/jewels/etc and how many magic items there are.
The value progression even stops at CR20 and i couldn't find suggestions on how to go further.
How the other GMs here deal with dragon's hoards?
Grab the 3.5 WotC sourcebook Draconomicon if you can.
Forgot about that :) i have it.
Just don't go nuts with the random art objects - there is very little chance that a life-sized model of a city made from platinum is only worth 8,000 gp (yes, that is something I rolled up once).
I hate random art objects, but i do understand they are necessary to add up to treasure's value without putting too many magic items in it.
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I was planning one of the BBEG for the campaign i'm running (house-made) and ran into something i didn't think could be an obstacle.
The evil boss in particular is a great wyrm red dragon CR22; once i finished his stats i began working on his treasure, but found the corebook gives very little details on how to design dragon's hoards (or how to design every treasure to tell the truth).
The rules only give the medium gold value of a given treasure for a given encounter's CR and then you have to decide how much is money, how much is art/jewels/etc and how many magic items there are.
The value progression even stops at CR20 and i couldn't find suggestions on how to go further.How the other GMs here deal with dragon's hoards?
Remember that a true "dragon's horde" is not going to consist solely of that dragon's treasure value. His or her treasure value might represent the sorts of things he has on hand perhaps, but a dragon's horde in a dragon's lair is an entirely different thing. It's the treasure of an adventure itself. Allow me to explain.
Let's say you have an ancient red dragon (CR 19) with triple treasure. That dragon's treasure value is only 159,000 gp. That's not that impressive for a dragon's horde. Heck, it's maybe 3 level appropriate magic items and some dragon pocket change. So where does the horde come from? Well, dragons collect up hordes in a single place and guard them in a truly draconian fashion (pun intended).
Dragons will guard their treasure hordes with a variety of terrible traps, nasty monsters, and harrowing challenges. Most of these things have their own challenge ratings, and while they do not themselves use or have treasure, they do contribute to the adventure's overall treasure value. This makes sense in a sort of what, when you consider that the larger the dragon's horde becomes the more defenses the dragon would set up to defend it.
Here's an example CR 19 encounters, traps, and finally the dragon's true horde.
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CR 19 Room with 8 CR 13 Maximized Fireball Traps (92,800 gp)
CR 19 Room with 21 CR 10 Summon Monster IX resetting trap, summoning a hostile glabrezu each round while intruders remain in the area (yes, that does mean 21 Glabrezu appear each round to fight). (89,250 gp)
CR 19 256 CR 3 Shadows wandering through the dungeon attempting to kill intruders (204,800 gp)
CR 21 Dragon's lair. 1 CR 19 Ancient Red Dragon plus 1 CR 19 resetting meteor swarm trap (212,000 gp)
Total Treasure Value: 400,000 gp
Example Horde: 10,000,000 copper pieces (200,000 lbs. of copper coins), 500,000 silver pieces (10,000 lbs. of silver coins), 48,850 gp (977 lbs. of gold coins), 400,000 gp worth of magic items, art pieces, etc. And of it that the dragon can use (such as wands, scrolls, staffs, wondrous items, etc) will be used by the dragon if in his or her lair.
You may find some inspiration here.
Or you could really go back in time and use the hoarde from the Dragon Mountain boxed adventure (AD&D). In many ways that box gives a hell of example of Ashiel posted, that and was one great adventure.
Pity at the times AD&D was published, RPGames were all but unknown in italy, and at the present i wouldn't know were to start to find material from that ed.
The draconomicon of 3,5 is detailed enough however,so i'm using that.