How would you transport heavy loot ?

[HurinTheCursed]

Hello people,

My group is composed of a L13 paladin, druid (and his beasts) and barbarian, a L6 pixie scout, a L10 sorcerer, companion cleric and gish.
I play in a campaign in which the loot is mostly composed of low value coins in big coffers, master work stuff and pieces of art (we're not always sipposed to take away) rather than middle / high valued magic items and gems. Since there are few cities big enough to sell the loot and spend money or enchant items, we tend to accumulate a lot of weight and to let valuable items or coins behind us. Worst, we recently found a huge sphere of platinum but couldn't move it.

We already have a level 3 and a level 4 bag of holding, a few haversacs but it's hardly enought. We just got teleport which should help to decrease the pressure. Anyway, how would you transport such massive amount of loot ? Some of it tends to be underwater, in towers or in dragon nest which makes use of animals (druid changing into an elephant ?) and charriots difficult.

My question is, what solutions would you use in such a case ? We are rather poor and leaving valuables behind is not fun, especially when we still have +1/+2 items and lower level casters to buff.

[weckar]

I'd say you're about at the level where it's right to start bargaining for access to a demiplane...

[Zanos]

Portable hole? Alternatively, an enveloping pit from MIC is even larger, but either requires that you UMD it or be LN, LE, or NE.

[shylocke]

Normally I'd suggest belts of many pockets. Holds 680lb and is weightless aslong as you wear it.

[Eldest]

The enveloping pit is also far cheaper: 3600 instead of 20k for 50 foot depth instead of 10 feet deep. Well worth it if you have the ability to UMD it or a LN/LE/NE character.

[XmonkTad]

How does your scout feel about taking levels of hordestealer? 3rd level grants you deep pockets, which lets you turn things into extadimensional storage. RAW it works on pockets, backpacks, and barrels so you could have a tailor make you a really wide mouthed backpack for transporting very large valuables.

[Azoth]

Since you guys/gals are low on funds, mayhaps you should start improvising sleds, wagons, and the like to load it up on. Frome there it turns into a group pull fest. You won't be fast moving, but you won't be leaving it behind either.

Underwater is similar. Tie ropes around it, and party pull it to the surface.

[weckar]

If you are carrying full bags of coin, how are you poor? Are there no money changers or banks around?

[HunterOfJello]

The Shrink Item spell helps for moving around singular heavy objects. A pack of mules and a scary enough follower to herd and watch them will help.

Having your druid wildshape into something like a Elephant would definitely help. Other forms like a HIppopotamus may be even better.

[Zweisteine]

A Rod of Splendor might be able to hold treasure, but someone might need to be inside with the treasure for that to work.

A pair of Ring Gates can transport some treasure up to 100 miles, but the limit is 18 inches in diameter, and 100 pounds per day.

Some sort of item to "upgrade" currencies would be ideal, but none exists that I know of.

What you really need is a Bag of Holding Type V or VI, or even VII... I'll figure out some numbers for those...

[Grollub]

if none of the above help.. make a deal!!

Simply find some NPC you can relatively trust.. and make him a deal to clean up after you and give you a percentage cut )

[Kane0]

Don't worry buddy, Tenser has you covered.

[Zweisteine]

Some quick calculations have yielded a Bag of Holding Type V.

I based it all off of the only thing with any sort of constant pattern in the original bags: the price, which increases by about 2500 gp each step.

I also assume that the apparent weight of the Type 4 Bag is stupid, and said that it actually weighs 45 pounds.

Bag of Holding Type V
Price: 12,500 gp
Apparent weight: 55 lbs
Weight limit: 2000 lbs
Volume limit: 375 cubic feet

Bag of Holding Type VI
Price: 15000 gp
Apparent weight: 65 lbs
Weight limit: 2500 lbs
Volume limit: 525 cu. ft.

Bag of Holding Type VII
Price: 17500 gp
Apparent weight: 75 lbs
Weight limit: 3000 lbs
Volume limit: 700 cu. ft.

Bag of Holding Type VIII
Price: 20000 gp
Apparent weight: 85 lbs
Weight limit: 3500 lbs
Volume limit: 900 cu. ft.

Bag of Holding Type IX
Price: 22500 gp
Apparent weight: 95 lbs
Weight limit: 4000 lbs
Volume limit: 1125 cu. ft.

Bag of Holding Type X
Price: 25000 gp
Apparent weight: 105 lbs
Weight limit: 4500 lbs
Volume limit: 1375 cu. ft.

If you get the bigger ones, I recommend storing them inside smaller ones, or Handy Haversacks, because they do weigh quite a bit.

If your DM doesn't let you use these, point out that the bags in the DMG really don't have enough capacity to store that much gold. (Except that you can actually store a bunch of type II, III, or IV bags inside just one type I bag.)

[Phelix-Mu]

Am I really the first person to suggest hoard gullet? It's a spell from Races of the Dragon, if I recall correctly, which lets you hold treasure in an extradimensional space in your stomach. With a wand of it that had a decent caster level, you could plausibly UMD it on each person in the party. Extra effective when combined with shrink item on large chunks of gold (see below).

Alternately, you can get scrolls of fabricate. Fabricate the gold pieces into big spheres with holes poked through an axis. Run a pole through as an axle, and now you can pull or push the golden sphere along like a wheelbarrow or handcart. If you are worried about theft, get some paint or a nifty illusion. Basically, turn the gold into wheels. The druid should be capable of muscling around a big cart with golden wheels.

[Mithril Leaf]

Am I really the first person to suggest hoard gullet? It's a spell from Races of the Dragon, if I recall correctly, which lets you hold treasure in an extradimensional space in your stomach. With a wand of it that had a decent caster level, you could plausibly UMD it on each person in the party. Extra effective when combined with shrink item on large chunks of gold (see below).

Alternately, you can get scrolls of fabricate. Fabricate the gold pieces into big spheres with holes poked through an axis. Run a pole through as an axle, and now you can pull or push the golden sphere along like a wheelbarrow or handcart. If you are worried about theft, get some paint or a nifty illusion. Basically, turn the gold into wheels. The druid should be capable of muscling around a big cart with golden wheels.

Except of course if you have UMD and access to magical items the problem is much better solved by picking up a few Enveloping Pits and stacking them. 10,000 permanent cubic feet is a mere 7,200 GP.

[Telonius]

Worst, we recently found a huge sphere of platinum but couldn't move it.



Might be a stupid question, but ... was there any reason you couldn't roll it?

Otherwise, yeah, Shrink Item is probably going to be your best bet. Maybe a Wand of it would be in order; if you're leaving behind as much as it sounds like, it'll pay for itself in short order.

[Deophaun]

Except of course if you have UMD and access to magical items the problem is much better solved by picking up a few Enveloping Pits and stacking them. 10,000 permanent cubic feet is a mere 7,200 GP.
Problem is Enveloping Pits are relics, which means they generally are not for sale (their price is for treasure placement only), and there are about six of any given one in existence. So the only really reliable way to get one, assuming the DM doesn't take the MIC's advice and add additional requirements, is to take the Sanctify Relic feat and Craft Wondrous Item.

[atomicwaffle]

Leomund's Secret Chest
Leomund's Sturdy Cottage
Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion

Store valuables in there. Especially the mansion. That thing can hold A LOT of swag.

[Bullet06320]

u can hire common laborers for cheap

and u said giant sphere of platinum? just roll it away?

bury wat u cant carry on this trip, come back for it later

and druids compainons should be able to help drag or carry too, even if u have to rig up saddle bags and such

[Firechanter]

Problem Exists Between DM-Screen And Chair.

No matter what you do, you'll always be poor and underequipped, as long as your DM doesn't lose that attitude.

[Venger]

Problem Exists Between DM-Screen And Chair.

No matter what you do, you'll always be poor and underequipped, as long as your DM doesn't lose that attitude.

^This.


As is often the case with things like this, I suggest first of all, asking your DM what exactly the deal is. I had a similar conversation with one of my DMs a few years ago.

I said the last few times we got treasure, it was unusually cumbersome (heavy junk, small coins, etc) and took quite a bit of (out of game) time to adjudicate how we were going to move it.

moving the loot itself wasn't a "challenge" in that sense. we weren't attacked while we were getting it to town and there was no trick to carrying it away, it was just sort of busy work. I asked if he had planned on it being a sort of additional challenge and if he was treating it as a "puzzle" or something and that we'd sort of prefer to spend our weekly session playing rather than going to the bank.

he told me he was just following the treasure tables exactly and had happened to roll a lot of low value coins and stuff. I asked if there wasn't any issue there, if it was all the same to him if he just gave money in "larger bills" as it were when that happened and everyone was fine with it.

I strongly suggest taking your DM aside after (or before) a game session and asking him these questions. best case, he says he just didn't realize and you'll stop having to play moving company the RPG, worst case he'll keep things the way they are but at least explain his rationale for it.

maybe in your game, while you're carrying stuff, you're attacked by bad guys because you're wandering so long. maybe you have to cross narrow bridges with anti-teleport spells on there. I don't know, so I advise asking.

anyway, that said, assuming your DM includes this hurdle on purpose and is set on keeping it, here's a few strategies I've used (that haven't been mentioned already. I give my vote to hoard gullet for short term and enveloping pits if you've got a compatible alignment and your DM allows magicmarts)

while I know 13th lvl druids don't have wild shape (huge) yet, (so no elephants) they can still turn into something large and quadrapedal (like a dire bear or something) to get its carrying cap up all the way.

once you do this, burn a wild shape to turn into something smaller (housecat, parrot, whatever) and all your carried gear melds with your form. bingo bango, your loot can't be lost, dropped, or stolen, and is weightless and inaccessible. when you're at the bank, either morph back, dismiss, or step into an AMF or similar and all your stuff comes right back out.

unlike hoard gullet, it can't be dispelled (if your DM is treating carrying all your junk around like a puzzle/encounter) so is a little safer in that regard.

[hemming]

If DM allows it, even a fairly poor party at this level should be able to afford to buy property and build a small vault that no commoner could get into it.

I don't know if this is the type of game where you can make your own opportunities - but if you are getting loads of art you can't sell and there is a city with a wealth or nobility component, then I would open an art gallery and teleport to it with art as needed.

[Wacky89]

Easy. You take a very strong form like elephant and then load yourself up to your maximum encumbrance, which is almost 5 tons for n elephant. Then you wildshape into something else. Since all equipment melds and melded equipment doesn’t weight a thing, which means that you have no penalties whatsoever. When you reach your destination, you change back, and all the stuff reappears.

[Andezzar]

A survival pouch (MIC p.187 f.) could give you up to 5 mules for 8 hours each day for 3.3k.

[Lord Vukodlak]

Your Druid is 13th level? that's enough he can cast wall of stone, stone shape and move earth. So he's perfectly capable of making a crude underground stone vault with which to store your larger loot.

[Coidzor]

The first step seems like it would be to ascertain what your DM's deal is. If he's dead set on being a treasure-tease by throwing huge chests at you and then finding out that they're just full of basically-worthless copper or trying to tantalize you with treasure that's too big for you to take or you're not "allowed" to take and then sabotaging your efforts to acquire said loot, there's jack all you can do without defenestrating him a few times.

[Segev]

Tenser's Floating Disk is the go-to for cheap and easy transport. If you've got a wizard with Craft Wondrous Item, I suggest a bag with undifferentiated wood-and-string debris inside which, upon a command word, expels a little toy wagon with doll drover and horse that functions as a Tenser's Floating Disk. 3,600 gp market value, can create one of these per round. After 2 hours, the creation falls apart, so you make another one to pick up what it was hauling and keep going. You can make a bunch of them - enough to carry just about any amount of small-value coinage - and cart it into town.

If no towns are able to sell you anything, I suggest learning craft or hiring craftsmen to start forging stuff out of the coins. Melt them down into armor, wagons, etc. You have so much of it that they're worth more as material than as trade goods!

[Invader]

Packmates! Lots of them, because little walking treasure chests are adorable.

[Segev]

If you're really unable to spend it all, you could also just walk into a town and offer to let people keep 10% of what they carry for you.

[Agent 451]

You could also always drag it yourself, or have mules/horses/wildshaped druid drag sleds (assuming that Carry/Lift/Drag capacity still works the same for creatures as it does for characters):


A character can generally push or drag along the ground as much as five times his or her maximum load. Favorable conditions can double these numbers, and bad circumstances can reduce them to one-half or less.

[Phelix-Mu]

The first step seems like it would be to ascertain what your DM's deal is. If he's dead set on being a treasure-tease by throwing huge chests at you and then finding out that they're just full of basically-worthless copper or trying to tantalize you with treasure that's too big for you to take or you're not "allowed" to take and then sabotaging your efforts to acquire said loot, there's jack all you can do without defenestrating him a few times.

Maybe the DM is doing it for flavor reasons. Some worlds are full of stereotypical stacks of coins, goblets, and silken robes with thread of gold. Most people have an actual reason to hoard that stuff, anyway, as opposed to many of the more esoteric or expensive items that crop up on the treasure tables.

I also recall more coins in older versions of the game, so that might also be an influence.

Not saying it's right to waste time with bookkeeping exercises, ofc.

[Magesmiley]

For those not interested in actually being smart about how to loot dungeons, you always have the option of just leaving some treasure behind. Sorry, had to get that off my chest for the people who are whining that the DM should make things more portable. I'm pretty sure Gygax would've laughed at that complaint.

Some of your money is always well spent in being able to loot effectively. And being able to carry away your ill-gotten gains is a big part of that. The portable hole or one of the variations previously mentioned is definitely your best friend. Combined with teleport and a secure base, you can move a lot of goods fairly quickly. You have a 10th-level sorcerer, is floating disc on his spell list? A 10th-level caster can cast a LOT of discs if he isn't doing much else.

For the platinum sphere you found... how big is it? Do you have any tools that would be useful for cutting pieces off of it? Drills, hacksaws, etc., preferably made of admantine. How about simply trying to sunder it? While you can't move it in one piece, that much platinum in chunks is still very valuable. Get creative.

If you can't take it all with you, figure out a way to hide it until you can come back for it with a way to haul it off. Yes, NPCs or monsters might find it, but if you're smart about how you do it, it can be a viable option.

There's always hirelings too. And mules are pretty cheap. Combined with the "hide it" option, they might be viable.

[The Grue]

...Worst, we recently found a huge sphere of platinum but couldn't move it.

If it's any consolation, I can't imagine you'd have ever found a buyer for a sphere of solid platinum so large you could not physically move it.

[Seerow]

If it's any consolation, I can't imagine you'd have ever found a buyer for a sphere of solid platinum so large you could not physically move it.

You get it back to a city, sell it to a mint. Say it was a 10 ton sphere of platinum, that's 50,000 pounds which can make 2,500,000 coins, worth 25,000,000 goldpieces.

I'm sure you can find someone willing to take that off your hands, as long as you're willing to accept getting paid a fraction of the cost (and even at 1/10th you're set for gold for a 4 man party at level 20, you can afford to take low margins here). Or worst case scenario, you take it home, melt the **** down and mint it yourself, and have enough money that you can always buy whatever, even if nobody wants all of it at once for fear of crashing economies.


And I am assuming it weighs at least 10 tons. Less than that and a few horses with clever setup can totally handle it. Seriously a single heavy draft horse can drag 3,000 lbs, and it's a sphere (so should roll) and should totally count as favorable conditions to double that to 6,000lbs.


Actually... the party has a level 13 druid? Yeah, he can wildshape into something big enough to move just about anything. Dire Bear is a large quadruped with 31 strength? That means the Druid by himself can drag 55,000 pounds (27.6 tons). If they're getting a sphere too big to move, then I'm going with either nobody has actually looked at the encumbrance rules, or the DM is trying to set the PCs up with all the wealth they need going through epic.

[Coidzor]

Maybe the DM is doing it for flavor reasons. Some worlds are full of stereotypical stacks of coins, goblets, and silken robes with thread of gold. Most people have an actual reason to hoard that stuff, anyway, as opposed to many of the more esoteric or expensive items that crop up on the treasure tables.

I also recall more coins in older versions of the game, so that might also be an influence.

Not saying it's right to waste time with bookkeeping exercises, ofc.

Then reason may be able to reach them. *shrug*

[HurinTheCursed]

Thanks a lot for your help.

First, we play a campaign written in a book. This is a low magic world with few very costly artefact that are not necessarily useful (no one could use that +2 holy short sword or the ~+7 whip and I preferred my masterwork long-spear). Thus the heavy loot, the scarcity of villages is not due to the DM. We visit dungeons way too often to let the loot on mundane animals left outside (already faced powerful ambush outside or had to flee fast), marsh, boats, sea and volcanoes are not places for convoy and we prefer to keep low profile since the artefacts we keep have caused a few cities to be destroyed by a pursuing army.

Then, a few players (those who played arcane users at first) kept (keep ?) changing characters, often taking away more loot than they brought which made us poorer (we even had to enforce a mortgage-like rule).

I should add that since we had no teleport, we had to keep the loot for very long. Now we tend to change it for as many jewels as possible in cities since the population is too low to find valuable magic items or above 7th level enchanters.

My DM and most of my fellow players are not very experienced nor optimized. The DM dislikes most exotic books and tends to keep us using as much core as possible. Even physical prowess are frown upon due to "lack of realism" (but core magic is ok). When we had plenty of chests full of silver to move underwater, I used physics to explain my DM a 100 kg sealed coffer could be either of a volume small enough to prevent it from being a large object, or couldn't be hard to lift thanks to water, he replied there was no Archimede pull in his D&D. I may talk to the DM to adjust the loot to the wealth but with the "useless" artefacts, it's dangerous. For example, the paladin has a ~+10 weapon since level 8 while my level 13 character has a +2 weapon and a +1 armour and I'm more lucky than most others.

Now on the subject, the sphere is in a tower which wall are magically enhanced. It weights tons (as long as we just push, it should be ok) and is WAY too big to go down the stairs or through some corridors, even shrinked. We have tried the druid double shape change trick but the DM more or less ruled it out (carrying with ropes and stuff in large shape was ok), it might be worth trying again. I rejected envelopping pit because of the relic status and alignment problems. Our DM Said no to non-dimensional items tidied in another one.
We're always on the move so no way to have a safe place unless we teleport daily. Still, some of us we are under the effect of dimensional anchor. Nevertheless, I'll definitely ask the other about having our own mansion or hidden cache somewhere. Paladin's cohort could manage the place in a LG capital.
Hoard gullet is definitely nice even if the first load implies proper tools to avoid a two hours load time. Leomund's Secret Chest is now possible and seems nice and easy. In both cases, what happens if you shrinked the items you added and the spell (minutes) runs out ?

For the cottage and the mansion, since the duration is rather limited, does it mean you have to move your stuff in and out everyday to keep it from being lost ? Rules don't say if you access the same everytime and if the spell has to be kept continuous.

[Magesmiley]

Can you get high-level scrolls? And what is the volume of the platinum sphere? If you can, and it isn't too big (1500 cubic feet or less), consider getting a polymorph any object scroll. Have the sorcerer turn the sphere into a frog, pick up the frog and teleport home with it. 20 minutes later you have a platinum sphere again.

Just did the math, if the sphere has a radius of 7.1 feet or less (14 foot diameter) it'd be within the limit of the spell (CL 15). If its bigger, you'd need to get a higher CL scroll.

[Deophaun]

It weights tons (as long as we just push, it should be ok) and is WAY too big to go down the stairs or through some corridors, even shrinked.
OK, I'm now curious about the math here. Let's say that your corridors are 5' wide, which is standard for a narrow hallway. Shrink item reduces an item's size to 1/16th of its normal dimensions, or roughly 1/4000 of its original volume. So your sphere must have a diameter greater than 80' feet for this to be the case (of course, practically, the CL needed to cast shrink item on such an object is a much bigger issue, but hey: you said it, and I'm curious about the math here :smallbiggrin:)

So, a sphere with a radius of 40' will have a volume of 4/3*pi*r^3, roughly 286,000 cubic feet (so we just need a CL of 143,000 to shrink it). We know from Draconomicon that 12,000 stacked coins can fit in a square foot. This isn't the same as a solid block of metal, of course, but it's a useful volume to get us close to the value of this sphere. Platinum is 10X the value of gold, so we'll say each cubic foot of this sphere is worth 120,000 gp. Additionally, fifty coins equals 1 lb, so we'll say each cubic foot weighs 240 lbs.

That leaves us with a sphere weighing a minimum of 34,320 tons and worth over 34 billion gold.

My advice? Get some adamantium tools and start carving that sucker up.

[hemming]

Animate object doesn't specify that you can command the object to move...but maybe the DM is feeling nice

[Alent]

emphasis mine.


Now on the subject, the sphere is in a tower which wall are magically enhanced. It weights tons (as long as we just push, it should be ok) and is WAY too big to go down the stairs or through some corridors, even shrinked. We have tried the druid double shape change trick but the DM more or less ruled it out (carrying with ropes and stuff in large shape was ok), it might be worth trying again. I rejected envelopping pit because of the relic status and alignment problems. Our DM Said no to non-dimensional items tidied in another one.

... Wait... "even shrinked"? Core Shrink Item brings it down to 1/16th of original size and 1/4,000th original volume and mass, but caps out at 2 cubic feet * level.

If you can shrink it, you should be able to make this platinum shrink down to the size of a marble and put it in your bag of holding at the reduced mass indefinitely. If it's too big to shrink, the level 10 sorcerer should be able to cast fabricate to extract parts of it as shrinkable materials.

... swordsaged. ~_~

[hemming]

For the cottage and the mansion, since the duration is rather limited, does it mean you have to move your stuff in and out everyday to keep it from being lost ? Rules don't say if you access the same everytime and if the spell has to be kept continuous.

I think this is up to your DM to determine - I don't see it in the rules anywhere either

[Agent 451]

Now on the subject, the sphere is in a tower which wall are magically enhanced. It weights tons (as long as we just push, it should be ok) and is WAY too big to go down the stairs or through some corridors, even shrinked.

What do you mean by enhanced? Since the ball is in a tower, could you not just destroy part of the wall and push it out, and completely bypass the stairs?

[Skysaber]

I'd say buy a knowstone of Tenser's Floating Disk for the sorc. At level ten, each disk should carry up to one ton of material, and last ten hours (plenty of time for adventuring and/or travel). Also it's doubtful he's using his level one slots for much else at that level.

MIC may not be core, but it's pretty dang close.

[hymer]

MIC may not be core, but it's pretty dang close.

Dragon Magazine on the other hand is commonly frowned upon. Knowstones are in #333, btw. :smallwink:

[HurinTheCursed]

The tower is enhanced by something that looks like a force field. The previous one had an antimagic field.

I had the feeling shrink item was underwhelming. My bad, I have mixed with reduce person effects.
15 feet diameter, reduced by factor 16 would work to move it but it works up to 2 cubit feet by level and that thing is 47 cubic metres.
And we never got anything adamantium so far but a whip which can't be used for that I suppose. I do intend to buy some but it was way too expensive for me and my main weapon is made of wood.

This sphere is just the worst offender here, I did not attend to take it since it was worth half A BILLION gold (if it was full), it'd be ridiculous and unbalancing. I wouldn't have tried to sell it in one piece but would have melted it into manageable bars. And I didn't mention it doesn't belong to an enemy but to a friendly person whose tower was going mad ! Since the place is a kind of arcane holy place, taking it would not be a good move.

For the record, I used platinum volumic mass (21 450 kg / cubic metre) rather than draconomicon. But the draconomicon argument will prove that we don't have to use massive coffers (hold by 2 people) to move coins.

Tenser's Floating Disk will be of great help as well for moving armor and such big stuff. It seems more suited than Leomund's chest (heavy stuff) and the hoard gullet (plenty of small stuff) for that task.

Now my problem will be to get the spells. We're limited in the number of non-core items and spells we have. I'll see with our sorcerer (and the group) which spells she might be ready to take.

And I'll talk with my DM because it's rather frustrating to imagine epic characters that have choice between ~+3 weapon / armour they made and ~+7 useless weapons they found. I imagined that by level 13, we would already be around +3 now, not halfway. While it may have increased the gap between mundane and spellcasters, the mundane characters are more optimized of get more help for that while magic users limit themselves. But it also means we lack some resources in hard fights.

[Firechanter]

You could take the Item Familiar feat, allowing you to "sacrifice" useless loot and gain its full value to directly upgrade your main item (usually a weapon).

As for the Platinum sphere: have you considered _melting_ it?
Or cut some pieces out of it with an Adamantine weapon.