Demon body parts worth money?

[Theomniadept]

A couple days ago the DM's NPC killed some gargantuan demon and a player said we could harvest it for materials. He said two things that I have yet to find a source for:

1. Demon blood is a component in spells. I think I found one spell in Ghostwalk where this is true, but nowhere else.

2. Demon hearts are worth 40-50 thousand gold. I hae no idea where this comes from.

Is there any basis to this or is this all just elaborate blufffing?

[123456789blaaa]

Checking with Afroakuma (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=317316)is something I'd almost always suggest whenever you have a question related to the planes.

[Brookshw]

BoVD, page 45, he's making up prices, take it!

[Red Fel]

Tell me, does your DM operate out of a tent in small, oddly-named towns, selling assorted monster parts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya7mwQYeICQ) as some sort of snake-oil cure-all?

[Necroticplague]

A couple days ago the DM's NPC killed some gargantuan demon and a player said we could harvest it for materials. He said two things that I have yet to find a source for:

1. Demon blood is a component in spells. I think I found one spell in Ghostwalk where this is true, but nowhere else.

2. Demon hearts are worth 40-50 thousand gold. I hae no idea where this comes from.

Is there any basis to this or is this all just elaborate blufffing?
Elaborate bluffing. There is a rule for how much the heart costs, but it's only 18 GP a pop. Used as an optional component to have a chance of dealing more damage with a spell. Blood has no such rules associated with them, so it's valueless. Other body parts are probably a bit more valuable as parts for demonic grafts. Crack open a copy of fiend folio, calculate half the cost of the associated graft as the price. A demon's eye, by this logic, is a cool 60k a piece (half cost of fearsome eye graft).

[Theomniadept]

BoVD, page 45, he's making up prices, take it!

It wasn't the DM, unfortunately, it was another player. He's played since the first edition and he's played a lot of different tabletop games but to be honest I think he's confusing 3.5 with other materials.

[Brookshw]

It wasn't the DM, unfortunately, it was another player. He's played since the first edition and he's played a lot of different tabletop games but to be honest I think he's confusing 3.5 with other materials.

Well, 3.5 doesn't agree with him, the BoVD covers demon skin & hearts, ghost walk has demon blood as a spell component @ 100gp a vial per ghostwalk.

[Mnemnosyne]

A lot of the 2nd Edition (and presumably earlier) books had listed values for various parts of quite a multitude of monsters, and other specific things you could do with them. This is one of the things that I feel is kind of missing from newer editions, and he may well be referencing one of those.

One thing I have considered is simply redistributing the treasure from encounters like this. Make it so that the bulk of the treasure in many encounters is found not in fungible currency or even goods, but the actual body parts of the monster. To get their full value, characters then need to collect and preserve monster parts and sell them at appropriate markets.

[Meth In a Mine]

A couple days ago the DM's NPC killed some gargantuan demon and a player said we could harvest it for materials. He said two things that I have yet to find a source for:

1. Demon blood is a component in spells. I think I found one spell in Ghostwalk where this is true, but nowhere else.

2. Demon hearts are worth 40-50 thousand gold. I have no idea where this comes from.

Is there any basis to this or is this all just elaborate blufffing?

To quote FC1,
"If a demon is killed on another plane, its body eventually returns to the Abyss- unless trapped through magical means such as a dimensional anchor spell. No matter what happens to the demon's body, if it is killed outside the Abyss, its "essence" falls back into the raw chaos of the Abyss, where it is then reformed as a new demon."

EDIT: While we're on the topic of Fiendish Codex 1, I wholeheartedly recommend grabbing yourself a copy of that book. It has some excellent material.

That should answer your question. Sorry if that sounded rude or antagonistic in any way.

Cheers

[Necroticplague]

One thing I have considered is simply redistributing the treasure from encounters like this. Make it so that the bulk of the treasure in many encounters is found not in fungible currency or even goods, but the actual body parts of the monster. To get their full value, characters then need to collect and preserve monster parts and sell them at appropriate markets.

Actually, my love of grafts ended up with something similar to this once. I often have NPCs with a large chunk of their wealth in grafts. Took them a while to catch on, but eventually they asked about materials while trying to get some grafts of their own (the cleric was complaining, so they were looking for ways to cut the cost of silithar healing blood). Then they had the habit of both taking anything I describe in unusually large detail off the body, and preserving certain enemies because their components were used. Best examples were most undead (almost all of which have an associated graft) and fiends, which were essentially dissected entirely.

[Brookshw]

To quote FC1,
"If a demon is killed on another plane, its body eventually returns to the Abyss- unless trapped through magical means such as a dimensional anchor spell. No matter what happens to the demon's body, if it is killed outside the Abyss, its "essence" falls back into the raw chaos of the Abyss, where it is then reformed as a new demon."

EDIT: While we're on the topic of Fiendish Codex 1, I wholeheartedly recommend grabbing yourself a copy of that book. It has some excellent material.

That should answer your question. Sorry if that sounded rude or antagonistic in any way.

Cheers

I think I missed a something, you seem to have provided rules for how to harvest the body but tried to shrug it off as an option. Huh?

Edit: oh, were you saying because that step want taken this doesn't work?

[Grayson01]

Not really on topic but close, my rouge assassin did sell the severed hand of a Half-Dragon Paladin of Slaughter to a Devil for information once.

[Meth In a Mine]

I think I missed a something, you seem to have provided rules for how to harvest the body but tried to shrug it off as an option. Huh?

Edit: oh, were you saying because that step want taken this doesn't work?

I wasn't trying to "shrug it off", I gave a word-for-word quotation of the FC1's explanation of the termination of an average demon's life cycle. Nonetheless I doubt you could sell demon body parts as they would disappear once the dimensional anchor spell wore off.

However, selling body parts TO demons, that is another story...:smallbiggrin:

[Cikomyr]

I wasn't trying to "shrug it off", I gave a word-for-word quotation of the FC1's explanation of the termination of an average demon's life cycle. Nonetheless I doubt you could sell demon body parts as they would disappear once the dimensional anchor spell wore off.

However, selling body parts TO demons, that is another story...:smallbiggrin:

Given the inherently temporary nature of Daemonic bodies in the material plane, I'd expect their value to be rather high.

Especially if we are dealing with especially rare demons. I mean, who cares about an Imp's body part if you can pick appart a Marilith?

[Meth In a Mine]

Given the inherently temporary nature of Daemonic bodies in the material plane, I'd expect their value to be rather high.

Especially if we are dealing with especially rare demons. I mean, who cares about an Imp's body part if you can pick appart a Marilith?
I will note that FC1 stated that demo's corpses vanish in bizaare ways almost instantly. A piece of text noted that a wizard's apprentice performed an "arcane miracle" just to keep a dretch corpse on the material plane for a half hour, and the body parts causestrange, but temporary delusions in people dissecting the corpse.

[Brookshw]

I wasn't trying to "shrug it off", I gave a word-for-word quotation of the FC1's explanation of the termination of an average demon's life cycle. Nonetheless I doubt you could sell demon body parts as they would disappear once the dimensional anchor spell wore off.

However, selling body parts TO demons, that is another story...:smallbiggrin:

Sorry, I was tired and I think that came off as dismissive though I didn't intend it to be.

Moving on, we have price tags for the parts so there must be some way. Harvest them from live demons? Not sure they'd survive losing a heart though I'm trying to think of some raw for that (other than the spell in BoVD). Begs the question what happens to the harvested organs if the demon dies (assuming they can be harvested).

[Meth In a Mine]

Sorry, I was tired and I think that came off as dismissive though I didn't intend it to be.

Moving on, we have price tags for the parts so there must be some way. Harvest them from live demons? Not sure they'd survive losing a heart though I'm trying to think of some raw for that (other than the spell in BoVD). Begs the question what happens to the harvested organs if the demon dies (assuming they can be harvested).
No problem. I was also tired and irritable. Sorry if I offended anyone.

Judging by what FC1 says they would disappear as well. (I will also note FC1 states that it is the definitive source on all things demon.) That said, I believe that since a demon dying in the Abyss dies forever, it would be reasonable to assume that the body would stick around, thus allowing you to harvest the parts. This would explain the value of the parts, as it would be difficult to obtain demon parts that don't vanish.

I do believe that a demon could survive the loss of its heart, since its body doesn't operate like most material plane creatures. However, the situations in which a demon would lose a heart usually result in its death for other, obvious reasons.

[Slipperychicken]

I do believe that a demon could survive the loss of its heart, since its body doesn't operate like most material plane creatures. However, the situations in which a demon would lose a heart usually result in its death for other, obvious reasons.

I would whine about the idea of a vestigial heart, but I could totally see demons evolving them to troll daemonologists.

[Zombulian]

From my experience with the Fiendish Codex: Hordes of the Abyss, demons tend to not hang around after they die, hence there being an entire cult dedicated to figuring out how their anatomy works.

[Brookshw]

So, wait, if the items exist without any actual way they could or would exist (shy of wish perhaps) are we talking a RAW dysfunction?

[shylocke]

We always sold extrplanar body parts to mages for research material. But our DM built his known world from scratch so he set his own prices.

[Meth In a Mine]

From my experience with the Fiendish Codex: Hordes of the Abyss, demons tend to not hang around after they die, hence there being an entire cult dedicated to figuring out how their anatomy works.

That was my original point, but it appears that the player in question is not considering that, since he gave them some hefty price tags, but if a demon heart is worth 50,000 gold, you would think people could just go on a dretch killing spree and become very rich very easily, unless the player also decided to have varying values on such parts, although you could still pull wealth generating crap even in that case. I prefer running it as FC1 says it, but this player disagrees and I'm okay with that, as he is entitled to his own opinion.