Valuable Monster Parts

[DireSickFish]

So as a side-quest I was thinking of handing my players early on a list of rare monster parts/valuables that a merchant is interested in. It'll give them a reason to chase down some monsters while they are guarding an outpost. Be a little risk/reward to because they'll have to venture out from there post to hunt these things down especially if they are hard to find or need to be chased.

Could you help me brainstorm ideas for monster valuables a merchant might want? I'd like to mix in some ultra dangerous stuff that makes gangbusters with some more reasonable stuff. The party should be around level 3-6 for this part of the adventure.

[CNagy]

Eye of Beholder; apparently you can find almost anything in them.

[Lvl45DM!]

Dragon anything. Scales teeth bone claws blood organs eyes. Dragons rule so hard even their organs are better than you.
Mind Flayer Brains.
Vampire hearts
Essence of incorporeal beings, ghosts spectres shadows
Griffin, Roc, Giant Eagle feathers
Hell Hound Hide
Troll Blood
Elemental Chunks
Treant Sap
Doppleganger skin
Elf eyes
Fey eyes and sparkles.
Wyvern tails


You can go the extra mile and say you want monsters with that died in particular ways. Ashes of a zombie, a drowned Troll corpse a perfectly intact (no lethal damage) Unicorn.

[Ninja_Prawn]

...I have a list of spell components back home, but I literally just left for work. I think beholder eye stalks were on it, but I can't remember anything else.

The MM pixie entry specifies that they can substitute their pixie dust for any material component, but they're shy, invisible, good-aligned fliers, so harvesting them poses some interesting challenges.

Purple worm poison is probably a bit above their level, but highly valuable!

[SharkForce]

traditionally ankheg plates make excellent armour.

[GiantOctopodes]

A Medusa's Tear
A Wyvern's Stinger
An Owlbear's Beak
A piece of a Gelatinous Cube (good luck with figuring out a container to put that in)
a Skull from a Zombie
The pelt of a displacer beast
A housecat's paw
The feather of a Pegasus (or a Hippogriff, if you just want them to kill the thing)
The flame of a creature native to the elemental plane of fire (again, good luck with that)

Hope that helps

edit: Drat, just saw that the wyvern and feather bits were already mentioned, my apologies

[MrStabby]

Depending on level going after a Bebelith spinner might yield a lot of cash. Or death.

[Ninja_Prawn]

The pelt of a displacer beast


Ah, yes. This is what Cloaks of Displacement are made from, isn't it?

Are Gauntlets of Ogre Power made from real Ogre leather? I feel like they should be.

I wouldn't send the players after Sovereign Glue, though... That could get very sticky, in more ways than one!

[DragonLordIT]

Some fun things could be:
-the beack af the cockatrice
-eyes of the basilisk
-hearth of a succubus
-tentacles of the carrion crawler

You could add conditions for the component to be usefull such as:
" . . . . killed with a silver sword"
" . . . . extracted during full moon"
" . . . . that didn't eat for 2 days"

That would be more challenging even if the monster is not a very high CR !!! :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

[MrStabby]

Or specific creatures - things that let you add extra character to the fights.

The head of the biggest wolf in the forest.
The jaw of the last of a line of kings
The coat of a lion blessed by Malar

[DireSickFish]

All good ideas. I think for Pegasi I'd go with collectors wanting live foaleds. For Griffons and Hippogrifs similarly they'll want eggs (keep warm!).

Troll blood is cool but I don't want them killing one troll then filling up flask after flask and vial after vial of the stuff, so I'll probably go with Troll hears.

I like the conditions part, do you have any more examples of that?

There won't be any demon/devil related stuff on the list due to the lore of my setting.

[Slipperychicken]

You could assign a gold value based on the creature's CR (X times CR squared?), then factor it into any loot calculations you make. Especially rare parts (like a dragon's bones and hide) might fetch double the price or more, while very common ones (like a wolf's head) might be half or less. Excess damage to a desired part (say slashing or piercing damage to a creature's hide, fire and acid damage to fur, bludgeoning to a creature's bones and teeth) could greatly decrease the value of the part or potentially make it unsalable, while parts harvested from a "clean" kill would fetch a higher price.

Basically it's a way to change up risk/reward and encourage the party to think about the way they go about killing monsters. If they want rewards for high-quality monster parts, then they have to prepare accordingly. It may lead to them using "sub-optimal" tactics, like casting a spell which isn't as effective because it won't damage the target's feathers, or using a quarterstaff instead of a glaive because they don't want to risk piercing an internal organ which they intend to sell later.

[darkscizor]

I'm surprised no one mentioned roper digestive juices; they were said to be alchemical ingredients in the description. Here's a simple random table of 120 options.

A...

Monster:

1 Dragon
2 Unicorn
3 Giant
4 Humanoid Type (DM' choice)
5 Golem
6 Beholder
7 Lich
8 Mind Flayer
9 Aboleth
10 Other exotic of DM's choice

Part:

1 Eye
2 Finger
3 Scale
4 Tear
5 Brain (Pickled or not)
6 Tooth
7 Claw
8 Spike
9 Slime
10 Knucklebone
11 Tentacle
12 Other exotic of DM's choice

[Kerilstrasz]

Just for flavor, when the Npc give them the lsit of parts, add this one extra:
Monstrous Wildboar intestines
Say this is a very important part that they will have to bring back in a pristine state. no less than 30ft of it.
If they ask why it is so important, reply: "But.. for sausages offcourse!"

[HockeyPokeyBard]

Everything seems to be covered. All I could suggest is maybe finding the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son? Those mofos are so incredibly magical that their farts could be fairy dust for all we know.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Everything seems to be covered. All I could suggest is maybe finding the Seventh Son of a Seventh Son? Those mofos are so incredibly magical that their farts could be fairy dust for all we know.

I thought they automatically became werewolves on their thirteenth birthdays...

[HockeyPokeyBard]

I thought they automatically became werewolves on their thirteenth birthdays...

Pffft no. They just act like it. But the same could be said of any 13 year old boy if their mother had to deal with six other sons as well.

[Elbeyon]

In order to be the the seventh generation of all humanity they'd have to be immortal (or humanity less than 200 years old). I can see why that'd be pretty powerful magic wise.

[Slipperychicken]

In order to be the the seventh generation of all humanity they'd have to be immortal (or humanity less than 200 years old). I can see why that'd be pretty powerful magic wise.

Maybe they could be elves, or some other long-lived race? Living "well over 700 years", that gives a lot of leeway with the timeline. If we take a conservative estimate that the average elf is reasonably fertile up to age 500 or so, we're potentially looking at 3500 years or more since the first generation of elves. Of course, depending on how you interpret gestation and maturation time for elves, a prolific family could have produced seven or more generations in far less time.

[HockeyPokeyBard]

I may be misunderstanding but it seems people think that it has to be the first seventh son of the seventh son. As far as I am aware however, any boy with seven older brothers, who's father has seven older brothers would be a seventh son of a seventh son. While unlikely, that wouldn't result in the need for immortality or a burgeoning mankind...

[Elbeyon]

Oh. If that counts there'd be lots of them around. Not exactly special in anyway. They'd have no value.

[HockeyPokeyBard]

Oh. If that counts there'd be lots of them around. Not exactly special in anyway. They'd have no value.

There are lots of dragons around, lots of wyverns and oozes and pegasi and such. And seventh son with seven sons is actually mathematically incredibly rare. If I remember 12th grade calc well enough that's 1 in millions kind of chance. With a world pop of say, 3 million sentients, that's like 1 or 2 running around in any given generation...

[MeeposFire]

Arrumvorax pelts are worth a lot and can be made into high quality robes that provide excellent protection against blows and fire (well at least they did in AD&D).

[Estrillian]

Here's a quick list of spell components taken from the 5E rules PDFs (I am away from the actual books right now). Only a couple of things that fit what you want, Giant Slug Bile, Red Dragon Scale and maybe Fireflies.


Bat fur (Arcane Eye, Darkness)
Bat Guano (Fireball)
Cricket (Sleep)
Feather from a sleeping Bird (Dream)
Firefly (Light)
Fleece (Major Image, Minor Illusion, Slient Image)
Fur (Lightning bolt, Beast Bond)
Fur from a Bloodhound (Locate Creature)
Giant Slug Bile (Vitriolic Sphere)
Glowworm (Dancing Lights)
Hummingbird Feather (Foresight)
Owl Feather (Identify)
Red Dragon Scale (Aganazzar's Scorcher)
Snake's Tongue (Mass Suggestion, Suggestion)
Spider (Spider Climb)
Wing feather (Fly)


Obviously most of the work here is for local Bat and Owl breeders (spell components are provided only by insomniacs) and bug-hunting children, although special skills are needed to get those feathers from sleeping owls. Oddly enough nothing wants Bat Wings, despite their traditional role in ingredient lists. For more of what you want just upgrade some of those to Owlbear feathers, Hellhound fur, Giant Spiders and Griffon Wing Feathers (so that you can't just take down from their nests).

I think a bunch of MM creatures also mention having valuable parts, like the digestive juices from a Basalisk, or the glands from Fire Beetles.

If you really want to have adventurers monster hunting for parts then make sure that they are disgusting or abstruse parts that need a good Survival skill (or maybe Ranger levels) to identify correctly. Don't ask for beaks and claws all the time, but Caecums (a pouch connecting small and large intestines), spleens, bile glands (or just Bile), genitals, bladders (extra points if they need the urine), livers, tongues, bones (to force the PCs to extract them from corpses), gut, barbels (the spikes on Giant catfish) and so forth. World of Warcraft does a good job of demanding these sorts of things.

Real world legends held that a number of creatures (like the Lynx) sometimes had magical stones in their heads, or other parts of their bodies. This might be a reference to harvesting gall or bladder stones, or it might have been an actual belief in magic gems inside animals, which would be another good thing to send people after. Bezoars, as mentioned in Harry Potter, were stones found in the stomachs of some creatures that were supposed to be able to neutralize poison. Bezoar from a Giant Goat perhaps? (You'd have to kill a lot of goats to find one).

[Elbeyon]

There are lots of dragons around, lots of wyverns and oozes and pegasi and such. And seventh son with seven sons is actually mathematically incredibly rare. If I remember 12th grade calc well enough that's 1 in millions kind of chance. With a world pop of say, 3 million sentients, that's like 1 or 2 running around in any given generation...Depends on family size. If people are having 12 kids then its not as rare is it? Most would hit the seventh kid. It'd just depend if they both turned out to be males.