Treasure #

How to Roll #

When finding a hoard, there are several types of treasure that can be found:

• Coins (CP, SP, GP)
• Gems, Art, and Jewelry
• Magic Items, Scrolls and Potions

For each of these is a number between 1 and 20 being the probability of finding that type of trasure. If a d20 roll meets or exceeds this number, there is that type of treasure in that hoard in the amount given in the “amt” column.

Treeasure Hoards #

Key:

• CP?: chance to find copper pieces
• #CP: number of copper pieces appearing, in denominations of 1000
• SP?: chance to find silver pieces
• #SP: number of silver pieces appearing, in denominations of 1000
• GP?: chance to find gold pieces
• #GP: number of gold pieces appearing, in denominations of 1000
• Gems?: chance to find gems, art, and jewelry
• #Gems: number of gems, art, and jewelry appearing
• Magic?: chance to find magic items, scrolls and potions
• #Magic: number of magic items, scrolls and potions appearing

Magic Items in the Marketplace #

Magic items are not mass-produced, so the only way to procure magic items is in via a secondary market. This makes their prices and availability extremely variable. One way to deal with this is to use the treasure tables to seed the market, using Zipf’s law to make realistic-looking value estimates. To determine what items are available in an area, do the following procedure:

1. Determine the appropriate treasure hoard type (A-H) for the area. Larger, more metropolitan areas will have more items, but at higher prices.
2. Roll for the amount of currency. Don’t roll for probability.
3. Roll for the gems and magic items. Again, don’t roll for probability.
4. List them in order of power and rarity, starting with magic items, then scrolls, then potions, then gems and jewellery.
5. Assign the currency total as the price of the first item in the list.
6. The second item is 1/2 the price as the first. The third item is 1/3 the price as the first, the fourth 1/4, and so on.
7. Each day of game time that passes, do upkeep on the list
   1. Items bought by the party are removed from the list.
   2. One item chosen at random is removed from the list, representing others buying the items.
   3. Items remaining are moved up the list so that there are no empty spaces bewteen items, as scarcer supply makes for higher prices.
   4. Items sold by the party are placed into the list in their appropriate relative value.
8. Each month, re-roll from the same hoard type and build the table anew, reflecting new adventurers or arriving merchants.

A party may sell magic items using this same method, though generally at half the price, reflecting the “fencing” fees involved.

Example Treasure Market #

1. We determine that the market for our example city is a Type A hoard.
2. We roll for currency
   1. For copper, rolled 4 on 1d6, so 4000 copper pieces.
   2. For silver, rolled 2 on 1d6 makes 2000 silver pieces.
   3. For gold, rolled 5,6 on 2d6 makes 11000 gold pieces.
   4. The price for the top item is 11240gp.
3. We roll for gems and magic items.
   1. For gems, rolled 1,1,5,3,5,5 on 6d6 means 20 gems for sale.
   2. For magic items there are three (randomly determined): A scroll of insivibility, a potion of animal control, and a sword -2 (cursed).
4. We make a list with the sword first, the scroll next, the potion after that, and then a list of gems and art and other collectibles.
5. The sword gets the price of 11200gp
6. The scroll gets 5600gp, the potion gets 3,733gp, the gems get 2,800gp, 2,240gp, 1,867gp, etc.

To massage the numbers a bit, we’ll round to the nearest even hundred for items above 1000gp, and to the nearest 10 for under that. The results give us the following table for what is available to find in our city’s collectors’ market:

Take note that we don’t want to reveal the magic item properties until after the sale. That’s what identify and read magic are for, and if they use the sword before know what it does, then caveat emptor!