Golden Guardian loot?

[Tinalles]

I'm going to be throwing four Golden Guardians at my players this weekend. Their stat block says they require 15,000 gp of raw gold to construct, and explode with a burst of molten gold when they go down. But it also says "Treasure: none".

Are the players not supposed to be able to collect any of that gold after the globs have cooled? How much gold SHOULD they be able to get from one of these things?

[Untentril]

Depends how they deal with them. If you batter a construct into pieces with a hammer you're not destroying any matter, just..rearranging the molecules a bit.

So you have ~16k of raw mundane materials, but what they actually mean by raw is refined. Coz if it aint refined it aint gold.

Given the difference in bp I imagine separating out the metals would be pretty easy (as these things go.)

Sell it to somebody who can separate the metals and you're as good as selling refined gold to them, as the steel and gold aren't truly admixed. Hell, they could just pay orphans to scrape the gold off the steel frame with a knife.

Or, shortly: It's 60kgp you're giving them right there, what value they can get on sale or use depends on them.

(if they're silly enough to oblitterate the constructs or knock them into a lavaflow or somesuch..well.. that's their own damn fault.)

Have fun :)

*btw

Systems with standards for the weight of gold/element depend on that weight and purity, not the stamp on the coin. It's a relatively modern invention that only coins with certain stamps are legal coinage, just another tool that modern governments and banking systems have adopted to control economies an the citizens that operate within them.. but even so gold is gold and is tender.

That is to say that if you can prove the gold is of x purity(if somebody disbelieves you) it's literally worth it's weight in gold.

The entry provides that weight, so there's little really to be answered :)

[Tinalles]

I think I'll declare that some of the materials are unrecoverable without major effort due to getting mixed in with other bits and pieces, and knock off a few thousand gp worth. Say, 12K apiece. That's still a bit monty-haul, but on the other hand the APL is 13 and this point, they're in a greed-themed dungeon. So it's reasonable to expect a fair bit of loot out of it. If they get a bit too much here, I'll short them a bit later in a different area.

[Untentril]

Sure, or they're seen going back to town with what looks like 6000lbs of gold on carts and everybody starts trying to fleece them.

Or the market value of gold suddenly plummets when word gets out about how much they recovered. Jewellers everywhere start using their names as a curse.

Or taxes.

Or some of the gold has residual magical energy and one of the traders they exchange it with casts "detect magic" on it. Thinking it's transmuted she calls the city watch.

Or their accountant steals some.

Or their DM does...yep, prolly for the best.

[Claxon]

Since it says treasure none...I would explain it by saying that after it goes molten it suffused with whatever surface it was on top of. Making it difficult to remove. The players would need to cut away the section of the floor/whatever it was on top of and haul it out.

Also keep in mind, 15,000 gp of gold is about 300 lbs of gold. But the creature's description says it weights 1500 lbs. The rest of that weight appears to be in iron and steel (1200 lbs), which is also melted with the construct.

So, if the party can manage to move a 1500+ lb chunk of metal that has metled into the floor...then yeah I guess they get a big payday.

[Untentril]

You can sell or use troll blood but it isn't considered part of the treasure award. If u kill an entire tribe of kobolds you can sell their corpses to be boiled down to glue, animal 'extract' glue...or do it yourself, rather than leave them to rot and attract scavengers.

The steel isn't melted with the construct, or it would no longer be a statue, but an uh..idk the steel creates a frame that (most of) the gold is poured into. The melting points are separated by 300 degrees centigrade :)

Still..yeah..the statues are heavy...I don't recall seeing a rule about max weights that can be grappled.

"Falx made his grapple check but when mere moments later the statue went prone with him lying under it the fact he had it in a headlock didn't help much."

[Claxon]

The ability:

Quote:

Molten Destruction (Ex)

When reduced to 0 hit points, a golden guardian superheats and instantly melts into a pile of molten gold. All creatures within a 10-foot-radius spread take 6d6 points of fire damage; a DC 14 Reflex save halves the damage. The save DC is Constitution-based.

Makes it sound like the whole statue melts, not just the gold pieces (although it only specifically mentions the gold). Basically I think it's a little poorly worded, but that the whole creature becomes a pool of molten metal.

[Untentril]

Ooops :)

Sure, and as a reflex save is required it implies an explosion and not a ..seepage. If the pressure of the molten gold inside is 'superheated' to the point that it explodes (out of) the steel frame, you'd probably be right to assume the temperature gets high enough to melt steel also, perhaps not all of it, but that's kinda academic.

[Bob Bob Bob]

The problem is that you're divorcing them from their context. They come from a specific module. Details under the spoiler.

City of Golden Death:

The "city of gold" is covered in gold everywhere that can't be taken out of the city at all. The golems were made with that gold so while they have gold in them, that gold is utterly worthless. From the module itself (no clue if I can post this):

Treasure: The melted wreckage of each golden guardian contains about 5,000 gp worth of salvageable gold. However, besides the fact that the gold is fused with melted steel and iron in solidified puddles weighing around 500 pounds each, the guardians were created using the jewel of everlasting gold (see Appendix 3). As such, none of their gold components can be removed from the city.

[The Sideromancer]

Golem fuel can't melt steel beams!

[Klorox]

Claxon wrote:

Since it says treasure none...I would explain it by saying that after it goes molten it suffused with whatever surface it was on top of. Making it difficult to remove. The players would need to cut away the section of the floor/whatever it was on top of and haul it out.

Also keep in mind, 15,000 gp of gold is about 300 lbs of gold. But the creature's description says it weights 1500 lbs. The rest of that weight appears to be in iron and steel (1200 lbs), which is also melted with the construct.

So, if the party can manage to move a 1500+ lb chunk of metal that has metled into the floor...then yeah I guess they get a big payday.

300 lbs/15000gp in raw gold implies the PCs manage to scrap it all which, unless they have magic to do it or highly specialized equipment; might be rather difficult.

[Claxon]

I think the main problem is more "If they can remove it, someone can probably refine it." Because if they get it out, they can probably get someone to pay them half the value and they will refine it to get the rest of the value of it.