Players acquired the skull of a dragon and want to sell it - what's a fair price?

[Merudo]

My players came across the skeleton of a green dragon. They are carrying the skull back to civilization with the hope of selling it for gold.

What would be a good price for the skull of a dragon?

[greenstone]

How much money do you want the characters to have? Give them that.

If you don't want them to have gold in return for the skull, have someone "buy" it for gold and favours.

Or maybe someone rents it off them to display in a castle or hall?

[DarknessEternal]

How much money do you want the characters to have? Give them that.


This is the only answer that matters.

[Evaar]

You can also have a Wizard (or whatever) offer to barter for some magic items. Wizards always love bones and dragon bits; this is both!

[Verble]

Or you can have them run out of town for fear that another dragon will take vengeance on the town for killing one of its kind.

[Durazno]

As gold dragons are intelligent creatures, selling off one's skull might not be well received. Alternatively, the buyer might be a shady individual they'll regret getting to know.

[Unoriginal]

My players came across the skeleton of a green dragon. They are carrying the skull back to civilization with the hope of selling it for gold.

What would be a good price for the skull of a dragon?

How old was the dragon? The older, the rarer it is.

[Elbeyon]

Another dragon might want the skull for some reason. Maybe, to add to a dragon graveyard.

[KorvinStarmast]

As gold dragons are intelligent creatures, selling off one's skull might not be well received. Alternatively, the buyer might be a shady individual they'll regret getting to know. The original post indicated that it was a green dragon.

For the OP: as to price, is it being sold as part of a spell component, is it being sold to a museum, is being sold to a tavern to hang over the fireplace/hearth? I tend to treat those kinds of transactions as a barter deal.

Donate to the museum gets {X} thing in return from city council.
Donate to bar gets {x} standing free meal for {y} period of time.
Trade as a spell component/magical thing, get spell components (consumable) for spells that need them.
I find that pure barter is more interesting role-playing wise; so do most of my players. (Some of them are more "gimme gold" though ...)

[Kyutaru]

The original post indicated that it was a green dragon.
Yeah but are you implying green dragons are NOT intelligent creatures?

[KorvinStarmast]

Yeah but are you implying green dragons are NOT intelligent creatures? No, it was a correction to an error mostly. Following up on that, green dragons tend to be malevolent, while gold dragons tend to be benevolent - that difference indicates to me that which kind one had might generate different reactions from NPCs.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

This is great!

Have them sell it to a guy who is pocuring components for an evil mass polymorph spell which will turn everyone in one of their villages to cows.

Then let the party spend the gold buying the best steak dinners ever.

Next they have to go find the evil so&so at the back of the Tomb of Horrors before he gets the last thing he needs to turn the king's whole army into red eared sliders.

[Unoriginal]

Is it the skull of the Green Dragon you can find in Tomb of Annihilation?

[Demonslayer666]

I would take into consideration the level of the party, the age of the dragon, the condition of the skull, and the location they try to sell it.

In a large city, they may get several different offers.

[KorvinStarmast]

I would take into consideration the level of the party, the age of the dragon, the condition of the skull, and the location they try to sell it.

In a large city, they may get several different offers. Let the bidding wars begin. :smallbiggrin:

[Temperjoke]

I would take into consideration the level of the party, the age of the dragon, the condition of the skull, and the location they try to sell it.

In a large city, they may get several different offers.

This is a good point. I recommend having several offers available for the players. One option could be someone buying it for magical resources, who then becomes a contact for the players as a resource and as someone who regularly buys unusual goods from them. Another option is a wealthy person who is part of a dragoncult, who want to use the skull for a ritual or perhaps to resurrect the dragon in question, and if the players turn them down, switch to having the cult attack the players for the skull. There is also the option, which was mentioned before, that perhaps the townsfolk are afraid of reprisals from other evil dragons for having the remains of a dragon, so they actually turn against the players out of fear.

[J-H]

A mounted cape buffalo head (one of the deadliest large game animals in the world) runs $1500-$2500-ish on Ebay. A dragon is deadlier than a cape buffalo, bigger, more impressive, and much, much rarer... so quadruple that to $10,000.

$10k buys you a couple of nice, high-end .50 caliber rifles with good optics, or a couple of class 3 (full-auto/legal with lots of hoops) guns, which I would say are functionally equivalent to +1/+2 weapons in terms of expanding combat power in the right hands.

There's a slight downside in that, unlike cape buffalo, dragons could find out about this and take offense if it's presented wrong, but I could also see a museum making a dragon happy with the respectful display of an awesome apex predator - so call this a wash, buyer beware.

I'd value a green dragon skull as being worth 2-3 +1 weapons worth of gold for the properly funded collector or museum.

[Kurt Kurageous]

I'm going to say that the question of how much is answered.

The question is, who's the buyer?

I'm envisioning an enterprising tavern owner, travelling curiosity show, or curator/academic as legitimate buyers.

If the (old version) cult of the dragon is in play, its a good start on a dracolich. Wonder if the skull could make a demi-dracolich much like a humanoid skull does?

The bigger payoff is an increase in fame as an excuse for the NPCs to have heard of the party and give them quests.

Speculation done. Will the OP read and comment?

[heavyfuel]

A mounted cape buffalo head (one of the deadliest large game animals in the world) runs $1500-$2500-ish on Ebay. A dragon is deadlier than a cape buffalo, bigger, more impressive, and much, much rarer... so quadruple that to $10,000.

Well, I've encountered many dragons on my d&d career, but am yet to encounter a single cape buffalo, so rarity might not be a favourable factor unless your campaign setting is reminiscent of southern Africa.

Which is rarer? Dragons, which are found all over the place, or some exotic animal that only exists in a far away land and cannot fly to your doorstep?

[J-H]

Good point, regional rarity definitely varies. I was looking at global rarity.
A quick DuckDuckGo search produces results of between 400,000 and 900,000 cape buffalo in the real world.
My assumption is that most fantasy worlds have, at most, 400 to 900 adult/elder dragons globally - and even that may be on the high side, considering how individually powerful and wealthy a dragon can get.

A fantasy setting with 4,000 to 9,000 dragons, and the typical fantasy-world population levels (ie, much lower than modern era density) would likely have dragons heavily involved as political actors and influencers... which, although interesting, would totally be a thread derail. That's still 100 times fewer than the # of cape buffalo.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

My character is looking for a dragon skull. Throw in a plane shift and I can pay a hundred gold for it. :smallwink:

[heavyfuel]

My character is looking for a dragon skull. Throw in a plane shift and I can pay a hundred gold for it. :smallwink:

That'd be really cool :smallbiggrin:

Seriously, if my player showed me this post I'd definitely say yes to the idea of only because I love the can of worms it opens

[nickl_2000]

We found one in Mad Mage (still playing it, just found it) and our DM gave us 25gp for it. However, that may be due to the fact that we moved to Mad Mage from Dragonheist and all PCs have a lot of money at this point.

[Unoriginal]

We found one in Mad Mage (still playing it, just found it) and our DM gave us 25gp for it. However, that may be due to the fact that we moved to Mad Mage from Dragonheist and all PCs have a lot of money at this point.

Where did you find it, if you don't mind me asking?

[nickl_2000]

Where did you find it, if you don't mind me asking?



Level 1. The main thing in there was a throne that had snakes carved into the arms of the throne that would attack you if you sat in the throne. It was a tall room, and had dragon bones and wyvern bones in the middle of it (and the skull and wyvern stinger).

My DM likes to bring in custom things and 3rd payer supplements to adventures. So, I have absolutely no idea if it's stock Mad Mage or not.

It did a nice job adding to the paranoia of us players who didn't know if a bone dragon was going to pop up or something.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

That'd be really cool :smallbiggrin:

Seriously, if my player showed me this post I'd definitely say yes to the idea of only because I love the can of worms it opens

(We are actually looking for a specific individual dragon's skull. Wrong color too. But I too found the idea amusing. :smallbiggrin:)

[Merudo]

Is it the skull of the Green Dragon you can find in Tomb of Annihilation?

Yep! That's the one.