3.5 The Price of a Corpse

[dextercorvia]

I'm not sure if their are guildines in any of the books for purchasing a corpse (for animation purposes). One of my players would like to (legally) make a zombie, and I have established that the setting supports purchasing such resources. However, I am at a loss of how to price them. He's currently looking at 4HD creatures to make a Necrocarnum Zombie. He mentioned a fleshraker.

I'm looking for a fair price to charge, and I'd also like to provided him with a variety of choices. What other 4HD creatures would make good Necrocarnum Zombies?

[General Sajaru]

I think that would largely depend upon what it's a corpse of; it's way easier to obtain a dead human commoner than a say a grey render.

[AmberVael]

As far as I know, there is no standard pricing for monster corpses.

However, consider the fact that in order to obtain a corpse, the entity must first be killed. In the case of more common or docile creatures this is not as much of an issue- a cow that would be destined for a butcher, a wolf that some farmer shot with a bow, or a human corpse dug up by a graverobber are not something that require any intense seeking out or combative effort (at least, nothing outside the regular course of their activities- the corpse is a byproduct). Buying or selling an ox, according to the goods chart, is 15 gold a head.

But when you're talking about a fleshraker corpse... who exactly is killing this thing? And why? And the most likely answer is an adventurer is doing it because who else wants to fight a deadly dinosaur, so think about how much a normal band of adventurers would expect to be paid to go out, find a fleshraker, and murder it.

If you're following the treasure values per encounter table, adventurers can generally expect 600 gold from killing such a thing. So... maybe that's your answer?

[Necroticplague]

I'd just have them use the rules for buying Warbeasts for things that template applies to, and the rules for buying slaves for everything else.

[With a box]

It doesn't have listed price. drag it out from spell component pouch.

Sorry, the Corpse is target, not material component.

[Venger]

I'd suggest defaulting to slave prices from lords of madness p101, using the built-in formulae to tweak the price as you see fit depending on what special powers they'd retain in undead form, depending on what exactly they're raised as.

[Aegis013]

Hello, I'm the player in question.

I'm playing an Incarnate with the Necrocarnum Acolyte feat and with our game's number of players having dwindled to two (possibly a third joining soon) I figured it'd be better to buy a disposable minion as a Necrocarnum Zombie rather than to wait for an opportunity to present itself.

On the availability of a fleshraker corpse, or, at least in my mind why it isn't out of the question, is the game's setting is very Tippyverse-esque. With a city containing possibly billions of citizens (I don't know, really, but it seems big enough), there could be zoos or dinos could be used as work beasts like in Eberron.

In all honesty, fleshraker just came to mind because of druid discussions, so I know it's a very potent creature, but considering how urban the setting is, I do wonder if a humanoid corpse would be better. We have an undead in the party and doors don't really seemed to be closed off to him as a result, but I do wonder how often I'd be told to leave a creature like a zombie raptor outside. So a good humanoid shaped bruiser of 4 HD might be more desirable, but I really haven't done much in the way of minionmancy in previous games, so I'm not sure what creatures make the best minions or where to look.

[dextercorvia]

LoM suggests a base price of 100gp x CR^2 for a living slave, with lots of handwaving about doubling or more the price for great strength, beauty, or marketable skills. I think of those, just Strength would matter, as an undead trait. That seems high for a corpse, even in a society that knows there is value left in a dead body.

[Hrugner]

Price them by weight next to other trade goods. Have the DM determine rarity and weight, then find something comparable. you're really just buying meat from people who know there's resale value in an unbutchered monster. You may want to just buy a 10gold cow and have that as a starter zombie.

[General Patton]

For a Tippyverse sort of setting, I'd expect the standard policy for all dead who didn't specify otherwise in their last will to be raising as undead for slave labor. Something like the Dustmen faction in Sigil, except with an opt-out policy rather than opt-in. However, because of the longevity of undead, and space limitations, they probably reach a cap on how many undead they can efficiently use, and then any excess undead/corpses are sold. I couldn't tell you a pricing scale, but I imagine it would be fairly cheap.

[Aegis013]

For a Tippyverse sort of setting, I'd expect the standard policy for all dead who didn't specify otherwise in their last will to be raising as undead for slave labor. Something like the Dustmen faction in Sigil, except with an opt-out policy rather than opt-in. However, because of the longevity of undead, and space limitations, they probably reach a cap on how many undead they can efficiently use, and then any excess undead/corpses are sold. I couldn't tell you a pricing scale, but I imagine it would be fairly cheap.

I proposed this in the game thread, but my understanding is that this particular Tippyverse setting doesn't use this particular practice. Though it's certainly a reasonable thought, because when I've run Tippyverse-esque games in the past that's pretty well how mine worked.

[dextercorvia]

The way I envisioned it for the setting was more like a contract. You can sign a contract during your life, receiving some monetary gain in this life for perpetual service in the next. If you have no such arrangement, and your family cannot afford resurrection services, (which are controlled for campaign reasons), they can sell your corpse once you are done with it. I would imagine that arenas and zoos would rather dispose of the corpse of their monstrous corpse than use them for anything. This creates a market.

I think humanoid corpses will be cheaper and monstrous ones more expensive, just because of the difference in supply. A population measured in 10s of millions generates a lot of dead resources.

[Uncle Pine]

Based on the prices for slaves in LoM, I'd set the price of the corpse at half the described amount (so CR squared x 50 gp) because a dead slave isn't really useful. However, similarly to how selling a skilled miner dwarf to a mine makes his price double from 100 gp to 200 gp as detailed in the guidelines, it's reasonable to think that selling the corpse of a fleshraker to a necromancer whould bring his price from 200 gp to 400 gp. You could even quadruple the price if flashraker are considered exotic in your setting, bringing it to 800 gp.

[CrazyNoob]

Using the material component information from BoVD, a humanoid bone is 1cp.. An Adult human has 206 bones, so ~2.06 gold per humanoid skeleton.. A humanoid heart is 1 SP (Avg 10 oz), lets say an average adult person is about 180 lbs (2880 oz).. So.. about 28.8 GP for flesh, and 2.01 for bones for a rough total of 31-35 GP per body ish..

Or you can take a service route, 1 SP (untrained) or

3 SP (trained) a day, multiply by the life expectancy of a zombie/skeleton/etc..

you might as well hire a hireling, send him into battle and then finish him off when he's near death..

[Aegis013]

you might as well hire a hireling, send him into battle and then finish him off when he's near death..

My character is a Lawful Neutral Incarnate, but has some cleric casting. That's a little too dark when I could just patch the hireling up with magic instead of finishing them off. And whether creating undead is in itself inherently evil has been discussed, and I think it was concluded for this game it was not, after all, creating undead seems to be an accepted aspect of society, so the culture of the setting backs that thought, so I don't think my character is quite evil enough to that.

[jiriku]

If this world inexplicably operates on a free-market economy, you could expect several things:

a) demand for a dead body is trivially small compared to demand for a living slave. This means the starting price will be quite low.
b) the value of a zombie or skeleton is discounted by 25 gp per HD to account for the cost in onyx to animate the creature. buyers who can animate for less cost can be expected to conceal that fact from sellers.
c) demand is high for creatures that have special features or proficiencies that are kept as undead or have useful features such as multiple natural weapons, large size, or quadrupedal construction, and low for creatures that lack these advantages.
d) the distance to the normal habitat of the creature is probably irrelevant to the price, because in a Tippyverse transport costs are negligible and distance-independent.

I'd suggest an initial value of 1/10 the "live sale" market price for any intelligent slave. I'd expect "live animal" market price minus 25 gp per hit die for any beast of burden, with negative values indicate the bones are not for sale because they are not valuable enough to be worth the trouble of collecting and bringing to market. Double the market value for a useful shape (a large quadruped has high carrying capacity, for example, while a form with many natural attacks is potent in combat). Also double the market value for useful features (for example, a skeletal nightmare or a zombie hippogriff retains flight). Also, you might add a further doubling if a monster possesses a unique useful ability for which there are no close substitutes.