by volume (cubic feet) how big should dragon hoards be?

[Zhorn]

For the moment lets put out of our minds the value of the hoard (gp value, etc) and just focus on size.

I'm trying to work out how much 'padding' I should be putting into my dragons' treasure hoards to make them feel right.

Using just the trove content from the DMG's hoard tables, you end up with a rather pitiful size.

The fantasy image of the dragon's treasure hoard tends toward
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/37/f8/9e/37f89e4f2c69cc989255646e56c59626.jpg
Even in Waterdeep Dragon Heist, with the exceptionally large trove of 500,000 coins
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0a/f0/88/0af0881782a8be07678f88f05cc0854c.jpg
would actually be less than a 3.5 x 3.5 x 3.5 foot cube
This is using the more generous coin size assumptions from 3.5e Draconomicon

Coin size: 1 inch diameter at a 1/10th inch thickness, with 50 coins = 1 pound (regardless of metal used)

The book also gives a stacking volume of 12,000 coins loosely stacked to the cubic foot

500,000 / 12,000 = ~41.667 cubic feet

42 ^ (1/3) = ~3.476 feet per side
Even with an addition of 1d8 art objects or gems, and 1d4 magic items, the resultant pile is still pretty small.

Now at the end of the day, I can be happy with spreading the loot over the floor into a thinner scattering to get
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2e/51/2d/2e512d71150ed094fd62c1c1a0edcfce.jpg
but the DMG tables on their own will most yield something closer to 4 cubic feet (which would easily fit inside a 40 gallon barrel)

So I ask you, members of the playground, how BIG should such hoards be for dragons?
For the purposed of discussion we'll just consider dragons by their size categories (the actual contents/value can be fluffed to suit themes at a later point)

Gargantuan dragons should have a hoard of size [x] ?
Huge dragons should have a hoard of size [x] ?
Large dragons should have a hoard of size [x] ?
Medium dragons should have a hoard of size [x] ?

[Zhorn]

[Edit note: The post this was replying to has been deleted]

1) Coins of different values having different sizes doesn't exactly help anything. All it achieves is making the overall size of a coin pile harder to calculate.
Then you get the arguments of alloys, and then what the REAL value of pure metals is... and on and on and on...
It's a fantasy world with fantasy magic and fantasy gods. I'm fine with handwaving all metals used for currency have the same weight to volume ratio, and gravity is such that all coins are the same size and it results in 50 coins to the pound.
Needless complications can be avoided.

2) That's just comically bad math. Be it with simplified coin sizes from earlier editions, or the realistic coin size/density you advocated in point 1 (which would be even more ridiculous with how much smaller real gold coins would be).
I get that humans are generally really bad at imagining large numbers (so i don't know if the designers were counting on that or were unaware of the standards they were implying), but that would be some super mario sized coins to get a pile that big.

Scrap all that.
Just think in terms of what the DRAGON wants to lay on.
What is a hoard size (total size, so coins plus other stuff) suitable for each size category of dragon.
Ignore value, ignore composition. just volume.

[Asisreo1]

Two points to address:

1) While the dragon hoard is iconicly golden-colored, gold coins are rarely the only or even the majority of coins in it. Silver and copper are likely making most of the hoard's mass. One of the things that make the Dragon Heist's hoard notable is that it's basically nothing but gold coins. Coins of lesser values will make the hoard bigger for the same money worth, especially if you consider that each coin has the same weight but gold is much denser than silver and copper, which suggest copper and silver coins are bigger than gold ones.

It's kind of like how the content of Scrooge McDuck's money bin is often colored in gold by the illustrators, even though it's mostly made of modern coins and paper bills.

While the other currency are much more common, I can't imagine a dragon hording silvers and coppers unless they have a certain quirk. Maybe a silver dragon collects silver coins or a green dragon collects green gems. Otherwise, I imagine a dragon would prefer his horde to have the most extremes of wealth with them.

The DMG supports this. A dragon is legendary and therefore gets at least twice the number of loot on their treasure hoard table as regular. This means adult dragons have roughly 28.000gp and 3.500pp, which is more than quite alot of room, not to mention the gems, art objects, and magic weapons almost guaranteed to be in this hoard as well.

An ancient dragon will have an average of 84.000gp and 56.000pp as well as multiple high-level magic items. It's pretty bonkers.

[Zhorn]

The DMG supports this. A dragon is legendary and therefore gets at least twice the number of loot on their treasure hoard table as regular.
This was pleasantly surprising to find out. I had not been aware of this.
Checking, yep there it is DMG p133; legendary creatures roll twice and combine the results.
Neat.

Still not as large a resultant volume as I'd hoped for, but it does mean there's less padding to add.

[da newt]

A US quarter is 0.955 inch diameter and 1.75mm thick vs a GP at 1.0 inches diameter and 2.54mm thick (0.1")

So a GP is nearly equal in diameter but almost 50% thicker than a quarter. I always ASSUMED that a GP was significantly bigger than a quarter ...

How many round coins can you fit in an area - I'm not sure how to calculate that to account for open spaces but it's certainly more than simple volume, but less than assuming every coin is 1x1" square ...

But if each coin did take up 1x1x0.1=0.1 cubic inch, then 30,000 gp would take up ~ 1.73 cubic ft (which is a 1'x1'x1.73' pile) and if 50 gp = 1 lb then it weighs 600 lbs.

Bottom Line: yeah, 30,000 gp doesn't take up that much space making the traditional visuals of a hoard unrealistic.

Did I dork up the math?

[Zhorn]

A US quarter is 0.955 inch diameter and 1.75mm thick vs a GP at 1.0 inches diameter and 2.54mm thick (0.1")

So a GP is nearly equal in diameter but almost 50% thicker than a quarter. I always ASSUMED that a GP was significantly bigger than a quarter ...
There's two reasons I like using the Draconomicon from 3.5e for coin sizes
1) It's very close in dimensions to the Australian $1, which means my players have an easier time picturing volume with them.
2) it includes several examples of stacking dimensions, so I as DM have some nice round numbers I can through about without too much complication (simple is good)


How many round coins can you fit in an area - I'm not sure how to calculate that to account for open spaces but it's certainly more than simple volume, but less than assuming every coin is 1x1" square ...

From my preferred source, I'm going with 12,000 coins to the cubic foot. This is rough a packing density of ~55%, not perfect, but not comically inaccurate.

1 cubic foot is 1728 cubic inches
1 coin using the 1 inch diameter, 1/10th inch thick is 0.079 cubic inches
12,000 coins takes up 948 cubic inches of that space

an ~68.57% packing density would instead give 15,000 coins to the cubic foot, closer to a real world value and a round number, but would also lead to even smaller hoards.

for the sake of what I'm looking at, I'm fine with using the 1 and 1/10th measurement. It might not be current, but it is from an official book.


But if each coin did take up 1x1x0.1=0.1 cubic inch, then 30,000 gp would take up ~ 1.73 cubic ft (which is a 1'x1'x1.73' pile) and if 50 gp = 1 lb then it weighs 600 lbs.

Bottom Line: yeah, 30,000 gp doesn't take up that much space making the traditional visuals of a hoard unrealistic.

Did I dork up the math?

i guess it looks fine. don't know where the 30,000 gp popped into it, but it's a good a number as any for using as an example.

as far as monkeying with the treasure tables, most of the coins will still be as given in the books, I'll just pad out with other stuff of lesser value, but suitable for what a dragon would like to sleep on (for the given types), but for the purposes of this thread, that's a non-important factor.

Only thing I really care about is getting a scale on how BIG the hoard should be for the different dragon sizes.

[Quietus]

Think about your bed. Now picture a dragon. They want luxury. They want to be able to stretch out, to swish their tail through their hoard, to be able to lounge while at no point being in contact with the floor. In terms of space, I think the hoard should cover the floor at least in the X and Y dimensions to the same size as the dragon commands in combat - so a Large dragon needs a hoard that is at least 10' x 10'. Huge, 15' x 15'. This way they don't have to be curled up in order to fit onto their bed of coins. If you want it to be truly impressive, you can include an area outside of the main pile that is covered, but not as deeply, within the dragon's reach - usually defined by its tail arc.

Now, how deep should it be? As deep as possible, obviously. Some of those images look ridiculous, the coins are piled up in a way that makes no sense. The Waterdeep picture in particular, the coin pile is roughly covering the correct footprint of the floor, but it's piled higher than the dragon is. With the dragon perched on it, the entire pile would slide apart and you'd have a slapstick fall from what is a very prideful creature.

I'd say, the absolute minimum is that the coin pile should be, at its peak, at least 1/3 the pile's width. And I might go up to 1/2, but not really any further than that, or you end up with precarious dragon physics.

[Telok]

Reddit user did a spreadsheet for calculating this. https://amp.reddit.com/r/DnDBehindTheScreen/comments/5zh6zl/i_made_a_spreadsheet_for_quickly_calculating_the/

Frome hoard, 52k ancient Roman coins buried in an 18 in diameter pot. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frome_Hoard

Obligatory xkcd link. https://what-if.xkcd.com/111/

[Chronos]

Personally, I'm fond of the ruling that an ancient dragon's hoard size is "yes". As in, if you defeat an ancient dragon, and you ever after that ask "Can I afford this?", the answer is yes. This didn't work in 3rd edition with the assumption of wealth-by-level and magic marts where you could directly convert coins into power, but since we're rid of that anyway in 5th edition, why not?

Or if your players really like having big numbers to write down on their character sheets, then start with the visuals you want (a huge dungeon vault completely covered to a depth of several feet, or whatever), calculate how much that comes to, and then tell the players "You now have ten million GP each", or whatever. Don't worry about balance, because in practice, in this edition, ten million buys the same thing as ten thousand: Whatever you want that can be bought.

[da newt]

"This means adult dragons have roughly 28.000gp and 3.500pp" - I rounded this to 30,000 coins for my example math.

If you spread 30,000 coins (2 cuft) over a 10'x10' area I think that would result in a hoard depth of 2 cuft/100 sqft = 0.02 ft *12in = ~ 1/4" thick. In order to approximate a mattress like pile 6" thick it would require 720,000 coins (assuming my math is right - and I haven't had my first cup of coffee yet).

So if we assume "An ancient dragon will have an average of 84.000gp and 56.000pp" and that this particular Dragon exchanged all their pp for gp then they would have 644,000 gp and that would be enough to create a 10'x10'x5.36" pile (but the ancient dragon would be too big to lay on it).

[Segev]

Cutting it to 1 inch thick (gold is harder than any tempurpedic mattress), it’s 40 5x5 ft squares.

That’s big enough for a gargantuan creature to curl up on, just barely. 6 squares on a side, plus four more to place around the edges.

This might be visually impressive enough, too.

[Zhorn]

Limiting the coinage to being about an inch thick would give that decent spread.

So going by the suggestions above, I would aim for the volume of a shallow cone, 0.5 - 1 inch high, radius of 1/2 of the dragon's base template plus the greatest reach (tail, claw, bite, etc).

rough napkin math of an example
Ancient dragon on a 20 x 20 base, 15 ft tail reach = 25 ft radius, and lets use 1 inch height, gives a volume to fill of ~654.5 cubic feet.

Legendary creature, so taking the average of the treasure hoard roll twice ~140,000 coins (~11.7 cubic feet) valuing 644,000 gp

The initial divide of coins was about 60% gold, 40% platinum.
And the value was close to 87% platinum to 13% gold

Take that down the values represented by coin type platinum 60% (38,640 pp), Gold 15% (96,600 gp), silver 15% (966,000 sp) and 10% copper (6,440,000 cp)
Giving a hoard composition of 85.4% copper, 12.8% silver, 1.3% gold, 0.5% platinum

It ain't pretty, but it gives me a volume of 628.4 cubic feet of coinage, which is pretty close.
Add in some art objects from the tables, magic items rolled it too, shattered wood debris from broken barrels and chests, and that would pad it out rather well.


I'll fiddle with the numbers a bit more, see what I can add while leaving a larger portion of the hoard's value as being the more precious coinage, but it's a start.

End goal I have (part of another project) is to have more objects taking up more of the space. the pile's will have coin compositions closer tot he DMG tables, but a decent amount of the hoard will be more of a mix of plunder than raw coins.

[Segev]

End goal I have (part of another project) is to have more objects taking up more of the space. the pile's will have coin compositions closer tot he DMG tables, but a decent amount of the hoard will be more of a mix of plunder than raw coins.

Define "plunder," please. Especially for a dragon hoard, anything you're using in the "bed" has to be solid enough to resist being rolled around on by a multi-ton creature. It's also going to have to have a higher volume-to-value ratio than gold - not exactly hard, but still to be noted.

Interestingly, I think gilded armor might be worth less per square foot, and if it's gilded on a steel frame, it might be able to take the weight, especially if stuffed with other things. Assuming the gilding doesn't scratch off.

Anyway, not disputing it can be done, but I'm interested in what you're using to help define it. Anything like armor or weapons or even tools and fungibles will be things the players are likely to consider using, themselves. "Consider," not necessarily actually do, but still.


And gems are actually an anti-solution, since they tend to be more valuable per volume. (Not that you suggested them, but I kept thinking of them before correcting myself, so thought it worth mentioning.)

[Yakk]

So, I had a goal in 4e to make Dragon's have huge hordes. To do this I had to take the 4e economic system, which was exponential with a factor of 5 every 5 levels, and ramp it up even steeper.

I think I ended up a factor of 1000 every 10 levels, which is a factor of 30 every 5 levels.

I then tweaked currency, so you started out with things valued in silver, 100 silver makes 1 gold, 100 gold makes 1 pp, and 100 pp makes 1 mithral piece ("mithral" armor is a steel alloy with a tiny amount of pure mithral; this makes it insanely strong, which lets you make very thin material be as strong as steel; mithral plate is almost paper-thin), and 100 mithral pieces makes 1 astral diamond (crystal of solid magic).

A "level 0" horde is 1 sp
A "level 10" horde is 10 gp
A "level 20" horde is 100 pp, or 10,000 gp
A "level 30" horde is 10 astral, or 1000 mithral, or 10,000,000 gp
A "level 40" horde is 1 million mithral, or 10000 astral, or 10 billion gp

I used 6 grams -- weight of a US quarter -- as my typical coin weight. CP are lighter, SP are quarter volume and 6 grams, mithral is lighter (mithral is less dense than water, and the coins are gold coin sized), and astral doesn't interact with gravity linearly.

60 billion grams at 20 g/cc is 30 billion cc, which is a cube almost 30 meters (or 100') on a side.

This permitted my goal: Epic dragons could have large hordes of gold. And that huge pile of gold might be the smallest part of their treasure.

Because a small chest with a few thousand astral diamonds in it is worth more than all of the gold in the world.

---

Now, once you did something like this, you then had to mess whatever economy you had access to in order to make it not break everything.

4e has a limit similar to attunement, plus items that scale. So for this to work, each additional +1 on a weapon or armor would cost 30x as much (5 level delta), and on a ring or belt 1000x as much (10 level delta).

---

Now, as others have said, in 5e the system is different.

So start with this: there are no magic item shoppes.

There are magic items you can buy, but they are doled out like treasure packages. As far as the DM is concerned, a magic sword for sale for 5000 gp is the same as one found by killing a foe.

Players can spend gp on world-story impacting things (castles, warships) or magic items. But you control the supply of magic items such that you presume the PC can buy every magic item you supply for sale.

An expensive item is merely a quest hook, for the PC to go out and quest for money to get the item.

Then you can go and say "you all find 10 million gp" and the game keeps on going.

A warship is 25,000 gp. With 10 million gp that is enough for 400 warships (but not crew). And there probably aren't 400 warships for sale.

Maybe you can buy a half dozen at a massive shipyard; more than that will require time. The gold you provide might actually allow them to ramp up their production capabilities. And with the extra coin, they can import enchanted ironwood to reinforce the hulls (+5 AC, double HP, one part of the ship heals 3d8 damage per round, 20'/round faster speed), but makes the new ships take 2x as long to build and cost 10x as much.

With that amount of coin, what you can buy depends on what is for sale. By spending exponentially more you can convince people who don't want to sell things to sell them (want to buy a border barony with a rundown castle? It might be "worth" 100,000 gp, but to buy it out from the reluctant king might be 1 million gp).

[Zhorn]

Define "plunder," please.
...
Anyway, not disputing it can be done, but I'm interested in what you're using to help define it. Anything like armor or weapons or even tools and fungibles will be things the players are likely to consider using, themselves. "Consider," not necessarily actually do, but still.
Right, house game term, sorry.
Plunder is what we've been calling treasure hoards not made of traditional 'treasure'.
Take the first cave in LMoP, the majority of the stuff filling the hoard there is provisions stolen from travelling supply wagons. The monetary stuff the players are immediately interested in it relatively small, but the room is filled with crates and barrels of things that have value to the town they were being delivered to before the goblins took it all.

Playing pirates on the high sees? that merchant vessel to raid doesn't have much in the way of currency, but the boat is still filled with plunder.

In the case of the dragon hoards, it will mostly just be for filler. The dragon picked up an entire wagon and carried it back to it's lair. ate the horses, smashed the crates and chests open (the debris adds to the volume), if it gets lucky there was a sizable lockbox holding a fair amount of coin, but the majority was a mix of goods.
Over time the fragile things break, rot, crumble and burn away leaving just the shinier precious materials, but there still a remaining presence of things that have lasted the test of time. Tools, equipment, tradegoods, etc.



And gems are actually an anti-solution, since they tend to be more valuable per volume. (Not that you suggested them, but I kept thinking of them before correcting myself, so thought it worth mentioning.)

I will be doing this a bit. but I'll be setting up something to work out the distributions automatically baed on hoard size and value.
Part of the scaling I have done with gem sizes was base them of coin sizes, with the DMG prices being gems the size of 100 coins in volume (works out at roughly 2.5 inch diameter gems), with the weight difference of the same volume of gems being 1/5th that of coins.
I have a chart of gem sizes and prices (eg 1 inch rubies and diamonds are 250 gp), I'll clean it up and post another time, updating the thing I have in homebrew.
the general setup makes to so by volume
10 gp stones are an equivalent to silver
50 gp stones are an equivalent to electrum
100 gp stones are an equivalent to gold
1000 gp stones are an equivalent to platinum

With that I can mix in larger quantities of the cheaper gems and it's still adding more bulk than gold or platinum is, but they are still lighter than silver for their volume and thus hold true to being a more efficient method or transporting wealth as the books describes.