Dragon treasure

[Cicciograna]

Okay, your PCs just killed the nasty dragon which was frightening the valley. They find his cave, and deep within they find the dragon's hoard. An enormous, shining pile of coins, gems and magic objects which waits to be looted.

Drat.

It's an AWFUL lot of coins, gems and magic objects. Much more than you intended your PCs to have. I mean, it was an adult dragon, and he has been here for months: he's, like, rich as only a dragon can be.
How much treasure should you give to the PCs? There are piles and piles of coins and gems, they expect to be a LOT richer than before: how can you make them happy without screwing completely the WBL?

[Sinfire Titan]

Simple: Give them a Staff of Healing. It becomes too awesome to use, but still gives them the recommended treasure.

[Herbstfarben]

Give them standard loot, but describe it impressiv.
"This is the biggest pile of 10 gold pieces you have ever seen."

[Starscream]

Keep in mind that dragons tend to be under-CRed. They are actually worth more than they are actually worth, if that makes sense. So while x3 standard may be too generous, it doesn't pay to be too stingy either.

I like to include items that are useful without being so useful that they will impact every encounter from here on out. Simple utility items that might come in handy once or twice a session, single use things like potions that are valuable but expendable, etc.

I also like to include stuff that will require work to get the full value from. Like bearer bonds that are worth a lot of money, but require traveling to a distant kingdom to cash them in. Or a treasure map that will send them on an optional quest. They can either choose to pursue the extra wealth (and earn it in the process), or sell the items for a decent but not great fraction of their value (keeping them within WBL).

[Kylarra]

Art objects. Good luck finding a buyer for all of those.

[Sinfire Titan]

Art objects. Good luck finding a buyer for all of those.

Give them standard loot, but describe it impressiv.
"This is the biggest pile of 10 gold pieces you have ever seen."

Oh come on people, at least give them something useful. Like Wands of Lesser Vigor. You know, stuff that they need, but won't affect the combat?

[Kylarra]

buuuuuuuuuuut I like art objects. They're also great to describe.


oh well. Realistically a small hoard of things like Wands of LV and similar things are probably the best bet, but make for remarkably less impressive description of the hoard.

[Siosilvar]

Enforce the weight/mass limit on their Bags of Holding.

[Herbstfarben]

Oh come on people, at least give them something useful. Like Wands of Lesser Vigor. You know, stuff that they need, but won't affect the combat?

Money does that. Let them buy whatever the wish (and can afford).

[Irreverent Fool]

By RAW in 3.5, dragon hoards are pitifully small, leading many DMs to inflate the treasure to appropriate sizes. This messes up the balance in 3.5 because wealth is specifically tied to character power. The Dungeonomicon (specifically the economicon bit) addresses this partly by bringing up the "wish-based" economy. I suggest giving it a glance.

One thing that I see DMs fail to consider in these circumstances is carrying capacity. Coins are heavy. 50 coins is one pound and the majority of coins available for dragons to loot from the surrounding countryside is silver at best. Even with bags of holding, carrying capacity can be met pretty quickly. Even if they carry out their max weight in coins each (which is dumb: they should be going after the crowns and jewelry which is usually worth more than its weight, though this requires one to have some ranks in appraise to be most effective) and fill up their extradimensional spaces, it's unlikely they'll be able to carry it off in one go. Meanwhile, a suddenly absent dragon is likely to be noticed and avid treasure-hunters and monster may just well carry off chunks of loot while the party is making their first trip. I think this last suggestion is kind of a jerky thing to do, but at least the party got first pick.

I've used both enforcement of the encumbrance rules as well as the wish-based economy to great effect in my campaign. The PCs can do all the fun stuff they like with their wealth -- build castles, hire peons, feed the poor -- but to get truly powerful things, gold is simply no longer enough.

Now, your dragons can sleep on giant rooms full of treasure.

obnoxious
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[Sinfire Titan]

buuuuuuuuuuut I like art objects. They're also great to describe.


oh well. Realistically a small hoard of things like Wands of LV and similar things are probably the best bet, but make for remarkably less impressive description of the hoard.

You do know that Wands can be made out of precious materials too, right? They can be made into Artworks all by themselves, improving their post-use value.

Money does that. Let them buy whatever the wish (and can afford).

Except when they spend it on Combat Items to help them level up faster instead of spending it on tools to make survival a bit more practical than Rocket Tag.



Edit @OP: You could also steal an idea of mine, and turn the Dragon into the treasure. Because your players will be likely to do it anyway.

[TheCountAlucard]

+1 to the Economicon.

Now, you may ask yourself why these coins are so titanic compared to real coins. The answer is because having piles of coins is awesome. Dragons are supposed to sleep on that stuff, and that requires big piles of coins. Consider my own mattress, which is a "twin-size" (pretty reasonable for a single medium-size creature) and nearly .2 cubic meters. If it was made out of gold, it would be about 3.9 tonnes. That's about eighty-six hundred pounds, and even with the ginormous coins in D&D, that's four hundred and thirty thousand gold pieces. In previous editions, that sort of thing was simply accepted and very powerful dragons really did have the millions of gold pieces – which was actually fine. Since third edition, they've been trying to make gold actually equal character power, and the result has been that dragon hoards are… really small. None of this "We need to get a wagon team to haul it all away", no. In 3rd edition, hoard sizes have become manageable, even ridiculously tiny. When a 6th level party defeats a powerful and wealthy monster, they can expect to find… nearly a liter of gold. That is, the treasure "hoard" of that evil dragon you defeated will actually fit into an Evian bottle.

There are two ways to handle this:

•Live with the fact that treasures are small and unexciting in modern D&D.

•Live with the fact that characters who grab a realistic dragon's hoard become filthy stinking rich and this fundamentally changes the way they interact with society.

But once you accept that the realities of the wish based economy, you actually don't have to live with characters unbalancing the game once they find a real mattress filled with gold. That's not even a problem once characters are no longer excited by a +2 Enhancement bonus to a stat or a +3 enhancement bonus to Armor. Which means somewhere between 9th and 13th level it's perfectly fine for players to find actual money without unbalancing the game. Really, you can stop worrying about it.

[Acero]

Genie's Lamp. 3 wish spells for the party.

Once all wishes are used, the genie attacks.

[Hawriel]

I don't like WBL. It's ment to be a suggestion that turns to quickly into a ridged rule or demand.

It's easy to limit the impact of the giant score of a dragon hoard.

A dragon hoard has alot of stuff, and coins are heavy. Having the characters plan out how they are going to get it out can be a side quest with in itself. Try to answer these questions...

1) Do the characters have time to salvage everything?

What ever plot the characters are in may not allow them to loot a whole hoard. The PCs might only have time to examine the hoard and take afew choice items, bag of jems and gold. If the characters can retern to the dragon hoard after the mission is over, what are the chancess the loot will still be there?

2) Dragons have alot of stuff, how will the characters carry it all?

Do the players travel around with a wagon? If so how big? Do they have more than one? How many horses, mules, oxen does the party have? Most likly the party will have to higher some porters, and rent wagons and draft animals to carry the hoard for them. Depending on the size of the hoard it might take more than one trip. The money being used to pay this help is going to come from the hoard. Of corse when the common porters see how much loot the characters want to transport their rates will go up. After all the PCs can afford it, and they need the highered help to carry it away.

3) Whare did the all the loot come from?

how did the dragon get all the loot? Was it stolen from the serounded community over a short period of time? If so are the heroes not only removing a threat, but also returning wealth stolen from a city, village, trade guild, farmers, or most likly all of the above? The party most likly needs to give the treasure back to thoughs it was stolen from. The PCs would get a persentage as a reward.

4) Do the players try and take the corps?

If the players try and take the corps they don't just have transportation problems. Just what are they going to do with it? They could make the hide and bones into weapons and armor. Sell the blood, snot, brain, heart, what ever to wizards and or other spell casters.

(I once ran a published adventure ware the poop was saved in jars, with a gp value.)

The PCs could just take what they can, yank out a fang, rip out claws, and off they go. However if they want the full value of a dragons corps they have to higher help. This takes more wagons, and actual tradesmen. Tanners, alchamists, tailors, weapon and armor smiths. Not to mention the supplies to store all the dragon parts in. If a player does want weapons or armor made from the dragon they have to find some one skilled enough to make it. More gold and gems from the hoard used up.

5) Did the party fight the dragon in its lair?

Not every dragon just sits around waiting for a party of adventurers to show up and kill it in its own lair. Maybe the party ambushed the dragon when it was raiding a village. Now the party has to track down its lair. Good luck finding it. At least the dragon was killed 100 yards away from the tanner.

[Jarveiyan]

Don't forget that dragons can use some magic items too, if your not having them use those one use or charged items they have your not using theyre good intelligence score they get, however can't really help you with the piles of gold and art dilema(they love those things you know).

[Irreverent Fool]

I don't like WBL. It's ment to be a suggestion that turns to quickly into a ridged rule or demand.

Unfortunately, by RAW, WBL is a guideline that should generally be observed, lest level 10 characters run around with +5 weapons murdering anything in their CR or dying in games of "rocket tag" against the only opponents that can offer them a challenge.

obnoxious
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[Mando Knight]

In NWN2, when you beat the Red Dragon on top of the volcano, you get access to its horde... which even though you could be carrying a million gp on hand at the time, is impossible for you to carry yourself, so you can loot the rare items and a few thousand gp of money or money-like items and then tell the captain of your castle's militia to go get the rest for you.

[Thrawn183]

Add awesome non-combat items like an instant fortress or other stuff like that.

[TheDarkOne]

Give them a huge pile of gold and treasure. Then have some thieves steal a large portion of it from them. The players will probably want their hard earned treasure back, so it reduces the amount of treasure they get all at once, and gives you a new plot hook all in one.

[krossbow]

The dragon actually spent all his gold on playdragon issues.

[Sliver]

Some carts and an item to summon mules to help them carry a lot of treasure. Describe a giant pile of treasure, and then when they start collecting say it was just a hill that was covered with coins, so it looked larger then actually is because the dragon was the emo type and needed the ego boost.

[Mastikator]

The dragon doesn't have any treasure, but its body is so valuable that it counts as it.
How many dragonscale armors can you make of a gargantuan dragon? Many!

[Katana_Geldar]

You could do an in-game excuse that some of it had been taken already. My players are tackling a young dragon in it's lair, it's mother was killed by adventurers and they made off with the hoard. The baby dragon managed to hide and is slowly building it up again...until my group arrives.

[Rainbownaga]

Thousands and thousands of shining coins!!!!

...well, copper does shine.

This is actually a suggestion in the draconomicon if you want the "dragon sleeping on a pile of coins" thing to actually work.

Plus it messes with their minds and their carrying capacity, which are always fun.

[Cicciograna]

Really nice suggestion here. I particularly appreciated that Economy thing, with the hint that few coins are gold.

I also appreciated the idea of non-combat, maybe single-use, magic items, to add some flavour: I think that MIC could help me here...

Thank you guys.

[magic9mushroom]

You could be an utter git and give the Dragon Dragon Ascendant levels.

[Choco]

Give them standard loot, but describe it impressiv.
"This is the biggest pile of 10 gold pieces you have ever seen."

That is awesome, I am gonna have to do that next time my group fights a dragon.

Anyway, you could give them a big pile of gold, but make the vast majority of those coins from some ancient evil kingdom and thus not accepted in most places, and likely to get the PC's to attract the attention of the law. To avoid having the PC's just melt them down and sell the gold bars, drop some hints that there are plenty of collectors who would "relieve" the PC's of this burden at collector's prices, or that destroying the currency of the evil kingdom is said to bring a horrible curse down on the person doing it, etc.

[MickJay]

Why not play with the whole "wish economy" idea? PCs can't buy anything worth more than 15.000gp for gold, because any wizard can Wish for that much anytime they want.This would mean they can immediately afford every item worth up to 15k, but nothing else. At higher levels, it would mean they can purchase some extra consumables (not too many, though, make supply limited) and some random trinkets - they'd still be left with hundreds of thousands of gp, which they could invest in land, or buy titles, or raise a small army for plot purposes...

If that doesn't suit your style, make most of the hoard illusory, or explain it was arranged to look like there was much more of it than in reality, or part of the gold was fake, etc.