D&D 5E Monster Statline Loot

[karolusb]

<There is no right answer to this question, and no reason to dislike someone else's answer enough to tell them they are doing it wrong, let's keep this classy folks>

So, in preparing to run a West Marches inspired, get rich or die trying, hex/dungeon crawl I noticed something*, some monsters have seemingly disruptive loot built into their stat line.

I noticed this in deciding to change an Ogre into an Orog, more flavorful for the location, but, if you are using the DMG as your treasure generator, the entire mini dungeon this guy is contained in should have ~350 gp worth of loot. And he has a single item that is worth 1500 retail, and possibly wearable by a PC.

Working on another, deeper, dungeon level, I ended up with a Githyanki Knight, so a magical** Silver Sword, that I know nothing about other than it exists, and the players presumably will loot it should they ever defeat that guy.

I am curious how people deal with this. These are specific questions, but I am looking for general answers, especially with a relation to the overall feel of the game being run.

Do you force resizing armor, or declare that monster armor is in some way inferior to pc armor (Orog armor is extra heavy or crude etc.)? Do you have merchants refuse to buy (or for the shady ones offer lowball*** quotes for) monster items.

If you care about loot distribution, do you just accept that if you place certain monsters the PC's get way more loot? Does that make you not use those monsters?

And yes we all know that once you steal one Gith sword you can generate infinite wealth over time by simply killing all the other magic sword wielding Gith who are sent to get the first one back. . ..


* It hadn't really stuck with me in my normal plot heavy game where loot falls from the sky and people can barely carry it all, a side effect of adapting Basic D&D modules. In one module, that would presumably take a 2nd level party to 4th (or 3-5 in my adapted version), there are 18 permanent magic items, EIGHTEEN. In that game nothing a monster has in it's statline matters ;-).

** I kind of suspect that it is an editing flaw, but with the exception of the Gith everything that has magic weapons lists it as a trait (this creatures attacks are magical), the Giythyanki Knight has the magical note in the attack line itself. So if I give an Oni a longbow, it is a magical weapon, because of the Oni, not the weapon, whereas give the Githyanki knight a longbow it is apparently not.

*** "That is clearly a sword of hobgoblin make. Farmers don't want it, they don't have the time and training needed to fight with it. Knights don't need it, they have plenty of money to buy quality human goods. So really the only market for this is bandits, looking to drop it behind to make people think it was hobgoblins who raided the caravan. I can't give you more than 8 sp for it."

 

[MerricB]

The default rule is that "you decide how much of a monster's equipment is recoverable after the creature is slain and whether any of that equipment is still usable. A battered suit of armor made for a monster is rarely usable by someone else, for instance." (Monster Manual page 11).

The Adventurers League says that you can use items dropped by monsters (that aren't listed in general treasure)... for the session you're playing. After that, they're so beaten up they fall apart.

The basic fact is that gold isn't *that* useful in D&D... depending on what options you use. So it hasn't bothered me overmuch.

Cheers!

 

[Ath'kethin]

I have run into similar situations regarding B/X adventures having way too much magic in them, but in truth I run I to this in 5e compatible stuff too. What I mostly do is ignore the magical loot unless I can see a way to make it interesting in terms of the overall story, or swap it out for more interesting/appropriate items.

I'm actually very fond of using the Trinkets table as source and inspiration. Instead of a magic <whatever>, the goblin Treasury includes "a one inch cube, each side painted a different color." If the players don't care, no big deal. If they do, it's a springboard to additional investigations and adventures.

Now, the silver sword and items of that sort present a very different kind of problem. And I definitely understand the "endless wealth" concern. But what if the sword can't be sold? Githyanki come after whoever has the sword, and while a party of adventurers might be able to fend then off, Harold the Weaponsmith certainly can't. And if word has gotten out that Harold the Weaponsmith was violently killed after buying a strange sword from an adventurer, Monica the Dealer in Strange Antiquities might be a little more hesitant to buy one.

I don't know if any of this is helpful, but it's what I have.

 

[karolusb]

Answer right there in the book. Thanks. I am still curious if other people handle it other ways, but it does mean I can trivially point to the book if any players have a beef with not getting plate armor at level 2. ;-)

 

[Shiroiken]

When converting old adventures (i.e. AD&D), I reduces the treasure by a factor of 10 minimum. Magic items are handled depending on how I see fit, with probably about half to three quarters getting the axe (except consumables). I also change items to fit better for 5E, for example, Staff of Striking wasn't that strong in AD&D (found in low level adventures), but is way good in 5E (as noted by it's rarity), so it might become a staff +1.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Even if merchants don't want to buy hobgoblin chain mail for some reason, you can always use it to equip your hirelings and/or zombies. It is intrinsically valuable, not just commercially valuable.

My solution: for the most part, I ensure that conflict with tool-using intelligent humanoids is an emotionally significant event, and often dangerous. If you just want a dungeon crawl, go fight wights in a tomb--but if you get into it with the githyanki, whatever use you get out of the silver sword(s) will be more than compensated for by the fact that you've now got an entire nation of heavily-armed plane-hoppers on your trail. They will not send an infinite stream of easily-slaughtered lone Githyanki Knights that you can farm for infinite magic swords. You'll probably see exponential escalation instead, and the conflict will become a major plot point: if you defeat the first Githyanki Knight, then next time they'll send three, and after that they'll try send a whole platoon of 40 normal githyanki backed up by a couple of red dragons and five Knights. If you beat that, they might give up and pretend the theft never happened ("What stolen sword? In ten thousand years, no one has ever stolen one of our swords. I don't know what you're talking about."), or they might treat you like a hostile planar nation and send ten thousand troops to take and hold your entire nation permanently until they can hunt you down. With the way 5E bounded accuracy sets limits on character capabilities, those conflicts will all be very exciting even for high-level PCs.

Just imagine how the U.S. military would respond to someone breaking into an Army base to steal weapons, and that will pretty much tell you how I'd run the githyanki. Hobgoblins and orcs less so (a hobgoblin clan has fewer resources than the githyanki nation) but they'll still act rationally and make you work for whatever you get from them.

Any large amount of intrinsic loot that you get off of organized, intelligent, tool-using creatures is going to have been well-earned.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

When converting old adventures (i.e. AD&D), I reduces the treasure by a factor of 10 minimum. Magic items are handled depending on how I see fit, with probably about half to three quarters getting the axe (except consumables). I also change items to fit better for 5E, for example, Staff of Striking wasn't that strong in AD&D (found in low level adventures), but is way good in 5E (as noted by it's rarity), so it might become a staff +1.

Expanding on Shiroiken's comment a little bit:

AD&D had item saving throws. You got breathed on by a red dragon? Good, now all of your stuff has to save vs. magical fire or be destroyed!

Plus, you were not expected to always find all the treasure. Modules have enough treasure in them that even if you only find some of it you'll still be rewarded.

If you're running a 5E game where items never get destroyed and players always find 100% of the treasure, you'll definitely want to scale down the amount of loot. But you can also do the opposite: leave the amount of loot constant, allow players to overlook treasure without getting upset about it, and set an expectation that no item is indestructible except an artifact. (A simple and fairly idiomatic way to do it in 5E is to say that your items are safe until you hit zero HP--but if you drop them or go unconscious, then they can be destroyed just like anything else.)

 

[MerricB]

AD&D had item saving throws. You got breathed on by a red dragon? Good, now all of your stuff has to save vs. magical fire or be destroyed!

The trouble with the AD&D rules is that their application wasn't described. So, while some groups used that rule, it's quite likely not the intention of the rule. Does your armour have a 1 in 20 chance of breaking with every normal hit? Erm...

The AD&D rules often assume people are still familiar with the D&D rules. In the original form of the rule (Monsters and Treasure, page 38), an item would make a saving throw only if the item was unattended or the wearer was killed. In AD&D 2E, the rule was changed to items having to make saves if the wearer failed his or her saving throw.

It's dangerous making assumptions about AD&D play because it was so varied - and a lot of Gygax's original adventures were conversions of oD&D adventures! I'm pretty sure he would have melted a few (unattended) treasures through errant fireballs, but saving for every piece of equipment when you're hit by a fireball? Slows down the game, and doesn't actually add much to the game except frustration.

The trick is that in AD&D, loot gives you XP, so there's a lot of it about. What can it be used for afterwards? Strongholds, crafting magic items, paying taxes and hiring henchmen. Once you strip those other things out of the game, the numbers look a lot more odd.

(Also consider that the standard party size is much smaller now than then. Old D&D has a basic assumption of nine characters in an adventuring party - not all PCs, but men-at-arms and henchmen making up the total. Remember, 3 characters could stand abreast in a 10-foot-wide corridor. So, the split was more!)

Cheers!

 

[Oofta]

I always assume that if an enemy has any magical items, either it's part of the treasure or it's not useful for some reason.

So for example, if part of the bandit king's horde is a Frost Brand Sword, they're going to use it against the party. On the other hand if I want the bandit king to have a magical sword that I don't want to hand over to the party for whatever reason, the sword has an obvious curse. Perhaps when people go to pick it up they hear the screaming of the damned or something similar.

As far as gith's silver sword, there's no clarification of what type of sword it is. So if I was to give it a price, I'd probably just say that it's like any other silvered weapon and it's base cost adds 100 GP.

Miscellaneous weapons and armor are either part of the total GP reward or simply of a quality that's not worth selling. Rusty armor covered with orcish blood is worth a few coppers for scrap metal, and not worth the extra time it would take to recover it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Taking away a monster's equipment for the explicit purpose of depriving the PCs will often feel contrived and adversarial, and I want no part of it.

One of the few changes I made to the monsters in the game I ran was that the Balor's vorpal longsword didn't vanish when it was killed. The barbarian got to use it as a greatsword, and it was amazing (especially on crits). Yes, it is more loot than would typically be found at that level, but they paid the price by needing to defeat its previous owner.