How much is a Graveknight worth?


Advice


Short version: How much money could a party get if they sold a Graveknight on the open market?

Long Story: A few sessions ago, the group I GM for fought a Graveknight. Thanks to the heavy artillery that is the high level archer, it was destroyed before anyone even attempted a knowledge check. So the party never actually KNEW it was a Graveknight, just that it was an undead riding a horse. As adventurers do, they looted the corpse, chucked its magical gear into a bag of holding, and continued on their way to their main objective. It's magical gear included its armor.

Now one of my players is also my husband, so he knows next time someone goes to get something from that bag it's going to be SURPRISE! GRAVEKNIGHT! but he's good about not metagaming so I'm not worried about that. My problem comes from the fact that knowing that the party basically has a contained Graveknight, he's expressed an intent to sell it if the group figures out what they have.

Most of the party is Neutral (or on the edge of evil), and the one Good party member may protest but be overruled on the grounds that, and I quote "Saving the world is EXPENSIVE" and no one really cares about the rights of undead monstrosities anyway. The party not only has access to teleportation, but actually have a base in Katheer and contacts in Okeno, so they have have access to both massive legitimate and slaver markets. So they have the means to sell it, and the moral flexibility to entertain the idea.

So if the party does decide to sell the captured Graveknight off to a collector, evil warlord, or necromancer, how much money do you think they could get for it?


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It's rather unique and expansive I should think. Though I have no idea even where to start.

I would say the fact that's it's super evil and probably not interested in being a compliant slave is going to lower its price significantly.

It's also a rather specific type of buyer. 1) interested in an evil undead creature 2) some. Wan's to control/contain/make use of it.


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Heh, this reminds me of the good old days of playing Ultima Online. We would capture or summon undead mages and have them there casting hostile spells on us to train magical resistance.

Tangent aside I think it might be a hard sell, but it could be used as a interesting trap for someone's dungeon or lair. I don't think I would set a hard and fast price on it, it seems to me to be something that should take some good effort and RP from the players to find and negotiate a sale on. Maybe there's not even a gold sum, but instead a trade or even some sort of boon as a reward.


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Depending on the disposition of the graveknight, they could turn it into a an ongoing scam...
...and rid the world of folks who would want to buy a graveknight.


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Sounds like the setup for a "extraplanar jerk collects rare, powerful creatures and makes them fight in an arena for the crowd's amusement" adventure. If they put their feelers out wide enough, someone might just hear about it...!

(Aside: What outsider or other extraplanar being would be a good fit for this role? I may have to scribble this down for my Random Plot Hook folder.)


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What class is the Graveknight? The more castery it is, the harder it is to contain, but that also makes it better at killing things, so any potential buyer would have to consider both sides of that issue.


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blahpers wrote:

Sounds like the setup for a "extraplanar jerk collects rare, powerful creatures and makes them fight in an arena for the crowd's amusement" adventure. If they put their feelers out wide enough, someone might just hear about it...!

(Aside: What outsider or other extraplanar being would be a good fit for this role? I may have to scribble this down for my Random Plot Hook folder.)

Efreet would be a good choice, but unethical mercane or witchwyrds could also be a fine option.


You're pretty much only looking at Necromancers who would remotely want such a thing (only ones with a chance to control it).

And even then, a smart necromancer usually avoids intelligent undead since they always have a chance to break free and kill you. Making them a very risky proposition.

Anyone who isn't a necromancer is almost guaranteed to be killed by the Grave Knight.

The value should probably be low, since there is an incredibly high risk to having a hostile Grave Knight.


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Malefactor wrote:
blahpers wrote:

Sounds like the setup for a "extraplanar jerk collects rare, powerful creatures and makes them fight in an arena for the crowd's amusement" adventure. If they put their feelers out wide enough, someone might just hear about it...!

(Aside: What outsider or other extraplanar being would be a good fit for this role? I may have to scribble this down for my Random Plot Hook folder.)

Efreet would be a good choice, but unethical mercane or witchwyrds could also be a fine option.

All great candidates. Thanks for indulging my slight threadjack.

Other options for OP: There might be a few non-necromancers willing to purchase a live graveknight for . . . experimental purposes. Who knows what sort of interesting material components could be harvested from something like that? Alternately, they could bind the thing into a magic item for a powerful (if extremely risky) item similar to an efreeti bottle.


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It doesn't clearly state, but it certainly implies, that it is difficult to tell that a Graveknight's armor is cursed, so selling that off should be fairly easy. Of course even a neutral person might well balk at selling armor that will either a) turn into an undead horror or b) turn the WEARER into an undead horror.

Frankly, I think trying to 'sell' a Graveknight as a Graveknight is problematic at best. First off, the market is going to be very small. Probably require significant adventuring just to find someone interested. Secondly, anyone who both wants a Graveknight and can manage to control it is going to be tough to deal with. You pretty much know that they are evil and powerful, so what it going to stop them from just taking it from you.

Graveknights are pretty tough to control. While it can be done, anything doing it is going to be significantly more powerful than the Graveknight. Most 'mundane' means are going to be pretty useless, they don't have any needs or capacity for pleasurable bribes, they don't feel pain, they usually don't particularly fear death (although they do cling to their cursed unlife) and all they generally really want it power over others. Of course they also always want revenge on anyone who defeats them, so perhaps the buyer could obtain some degree of loyalty by assisting in that....

As an aside, selling this would be an evil thing to do. Not neutral. If it works, they are basically selling a powerful weapon to some evil force. Given that this would be a lengthy, deliberate process, not just a spur of the moment thing, I'd certainly consider it heavily when looking at what alignment the characters really are.


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None of the characters who I think would be on board with the sale are classes where their alignment matters. If they were divine classes, most of them probably would have lost class abilities loooong since. Especially Slayer "Come on guys, let's hear the Heresy Devil out" McArcher, and Fireball "Halfway through reading the actual Necronomicon" Witchington.

Though good points on the inherent danger of it possibly making it less valuable than just the value of its magical armor. And while the party does have contacts and access to a major trading hub, they don't have time to go adventuring around to find a buyer, since they do have a world ending apocolyse looming that they need to take care of as soon as possible.


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It is of course up to you how much you want it to matter, but alignment can be significant even if not related to class abilities. Finding out that the person you want to work with to thwart the apocalypse won't deal with you because you are detecting as evil could be a surprise. And of course general rumors and information based on a parties conduct can influence things, regardless of any magical detection abilities.

I probably wouldn't be looking to hammer them for their choices, but at the same time, I pretty strongly believe that actions should have consequences, and the world should react to the PCs differently based one their choices, morality and reputation. In a way, choices without consequence removes agency and I don't like to do that.

That being said, how much, if any, of a issue to make out of moral choices the characters make depends greatly on the style and theme of a campaign as well as personal preferences of all involved.


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I know of a neutral nectromancer who keeps a zoo full of contained undead who might want to make you an offer.


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have it be the graveknights sibling who just so happens to be a high level lich


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What a crazy random happenstance.

Just happened to acquire a graveknight in our last sessions, curious to see where this thread goes before my next session.


It's worth the price of a phylactery.

Because it will be.

A phylactery, that is.

But the burgeoning lich will be super grateful!


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Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

For a rough estimate gold-wise, it costs 25k gp in components + cost of magical armor made with special materials. The armor alone is worth this.
Add in a regenerating martial lich, the price can only go up :)


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My PCs just destroyed a graveknight in their last session. They had a little help from the Lantern King, but the end result is the same.

In game, there would only be a handful of places such a transaction could even be attempted such as Kaer Maga or perhaps Geb or Nidal.


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Animal Archive has prices for animals. While a graveknight is pretty much the opposite of an animal (intelligent, undead, evil), it's still a creature with a CR.

Let's check out some animals:

Behemoth hippopotamus (CR 10): 7,900
Giant anaconda (CR 10): 6,300
Giant snapping turtle (CR 9): 5,200
Dire crocodile (CR 9): 2,700
Dire bear (CR 7): 1,750
Hippotamus (CR 5): 1,050
Dire lion (CR 5): 1,000

So you roughly get an exponential formula (double every 2 levels), like for a creature's XP and loot. CR 5 is ~1,000, 7 makes ~2,000, 9 comes at ~4,000 and 10 at ~5,650 (4k * square root of 2; well, not really precise here).

Now a graveknight is both more exotic and more dangerous - you could say it evens out and it costs like an animal of its CR. It won't destroy the campaign if you are a few thousands off. Who would define that 'off' anyway?

Sovereign Court

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What about selling the graveknight back to itself? Set up a contract that has it paying off its freedom, overseen by the Church of Asmodeus.

They could even have it doing odd jobs to help pay off its debt faster.


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You want to be turn a Graveknight into a slave basically?

Lets see how that works out...


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Immediately after the sale the party will be enacting an occult ritual which will transport them from Golarion to a planet in another galaxy. So they aren't really going to be around to deal with the repercussions of their actions. So all advice involving repercussions are pretty much moot.

They'll be back eventually, but only if they manage to kill a god.

Grand Lodge

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what about the graveknight regenerates in the bag, then tears it off from inside ?

rules from the bag are clear : everything is on the ethereal plane


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'Sani wrote:

Immediately after the sale the party will be enacting an occult ritual which will transport them from Golarion to a planet in another galaxy. So they aren't really going to be around to deal with the repercussions of their actions. So all advice involving repercussions are pretty much moot.

They'll be back eventually, but only if they manage to kill a god.

the graveknight can escape kill and raise the entire planet and then teleport the planet to that which the party is on and wage war on them :)


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Lady-J wrote:
'Sani wrote:

Immediately after the sale the party will be enacting an occult ritual which will transport them from Golarion to a planet in another galaxy. So they aren't really going to be around to deal with the repercussions of their actions. So all advice involving repercussions are pretty much moot.

They'll be back eventually, but only if they manage to kill a god.

the graveknight can escape kill and raise the entire planet and then teleport the planet to that which the party is on and wage war on them :)

Yeah sure, maybe. But the question isn't 'What will happen if the party sells a graveknight,' it's 'How much money do you think a party could get for selling a graveknight.'


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'Sani wrote:
Lady-J wrote:
'Sani wrote:

Immediately after the sale the party will be enacting an occult ritual which will transport them from Golarion to a planet in another galaxy. So they aren't really going to be around to deal with the repercussions of their actions. So all advice involving repercussions are pretty much moot.

They'll be back eventually, but only if they manage to kill a god.

the graveknight can escape kill and raise the entire planet and then teleport the planet to that which the party is on and wage war on them :)
Yeah sure, maybe. But the question isn't 'What will happen if the party sells a graveknight,' it's 'How much money do you think a party could get for selling a graveknight.'

do they know for a fact its 100% a graveknight? if so i would say 12500+half of what the armor is worth if not half of what the armor is worth


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'Sani wrote:
'How much money do you think a party could get for selling a graveknight.'

At the end of the day, the answer is the amount you want them to have in order to maximize the fun of the game.

You can probably justify it being anywhere from zero to millions of gold, but that is how you justify it in game to the characters, the amount you should choose doesn't need to, and shouldn't depend on that.

If you want this campaign to go well outside expected parameters, give them millions, blow the expected WBL out of the water and strap in for the ride. If they already have plenty of money and you don't want them having more, give them virtually nothing. If it is somewhere in between, the give them that amount.


I would compare the cost of the Graveknight to the cost of other costly things, items. We can get a lot of value out of this servant.
The Graveknight is a rare thing. It is undying, pretty powerful and it is evil. That is perfect for a guardian/protector monster in a dungeon. So if you have the perfect buyer, I think these are fair prices.
I would say level 9 Graveknight no less than 100k
Then 25k additional cost per level.

That gets us to 375k for a Level 20 Graveknight, which is still pretty cheap so you might want to rework the numbers for higher levels.

Don't sell it for less. This thing can be useful even for you guys. Just open the bag somewhere, leave and let it do the dirty business for you.


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In case anyone was curious, the players dealt with this last session. As expected, they wanted to sell it. I had them meet up with an extremely shady, creepy individual who expressed an interest in buying the Graveknight, who gave them an offer of 20,000 gold from which to begin negotiating. Instead of bargaining, the fighter just said 'SOLD!', handed over the regenerating corpse in armor, and went to go buy some diamonds big enough to use as spell components.

Maybe sending the lowest WIS and INT character to the market wasn't the parties best move, but none of them wanted to touch the armor.


'Sani wrote:

In case anyone was curious, the players dealt with this last session. As expected, they wanted to sell it. I had them meet up with an extremely shady, creepy individual who expressed an interest in buying the Graveknight, who gave them an offer of 20,000 gold from which to begin negotiating. Instead of bargaining, the fighter just said 'SOLD!', handed over the regenerating corpse in armor, and went to go buy some diamonds big enough to use as spell components.

Maybe sending the lowest WIS and INT character to the market wasn't the parties best move, but none of them wanted to touch the armor.

a regenerating graveknight is undetectable until its fully regenerated


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+1 full plate is 1500 base armor, +150 MW, +1000 Magic+1...so total of 2650gp is the base line for the armor... For the beast first they need to figure out that they have it and second way to keep it in check. I would offer a hoard or treasure value equal to CR of the monster.


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Vrischika111 wrote:

what about the graveknight regenerates in the bag, then tears it off from inside ?

rules from the bag are clear : everything is on the ethereal plane

Exactly what I was going to bring up. Would this Graveknight realize it is inside a Bag of Holding? If it doesn't, it may draw its weapon, and sharp things in a Bag of Holding have a very good chance of causing the bag to be destroyed and everything gets scattered in the Astral Plane (not Ethereal).


That... is a beautiful story, 'Sani. Simply beautiful. XD

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