I am running a Dragon of Icespire Peak and Lost Mine of Phandelver combination campaign (spoilers ahead) and I am having an issue with the size of the dragon hoards for both Venomfang and Cryovain. In my campaign, both dragons were rivals to each other. Cryovain was changed to a Young Blue Dragon and took control of the cult of Talos, while on the other hand Venomfang, a Young Green Dragon, allied with the Wizard Glasstaff, who in this campaign is the leader of the local sect of the cult of Myrkul, in preparation for the expansions of Beyond Dragon of Icespire Peak.
A few sessions ago, my players completed a quest about killing an encampment of orcs in an abandoned temple of Savras and found a gold bell worth 2500 gp. While they were returning to town with their loot, they rolled badly on the encounter table and ran into Venomfang. The green dragon noticed the bell and fought them for it. The encounter ended with two players dead and the dragon flying away with the bell.
Since the players really liked their characters, I gave them a chance to resurrect them. Reidoth, a local druid and teacher of one of the surviving players knows the spell reincarnation, which let's him resurrect people who died within 10 days of the casting but it costs 1000 gp per cast in reagents. Due to the players not having that much money, their best choice to gather them is to kill the dragons and steal their hoard. They decided to go after Venomfang, since they know that she at least has the bell, which should cover the price of the resurrections.
This is where I come with the issue. I checked the hoards of the dragons in both modules. For starters, Cryovain has no hoard, which is because, I assume, it is left to the DM's discretion how big it should be. I went to a loot generator based on the tables from Fizban's treasury of dragons in order to save time when making Cryovain's hoard and it ended up being a lot bigger compared to Venomfang's, which according to the module would be:
An old wooden chest broken open on the tower floor holds the last of the dead wizard's treasure: 800 sp, 150 gp, four silver goblets set with moonstones (60 gp each), a scroll of misty step, and a scroll of lightning bolt. Venomfang spends much of his time greedily admiring the loot.
The dragon has barely noticed the most interesting item in its hoard. Beneath the coins is a rusty old battleaxe of dwarven manufacture. Runes in Dwarvish on the axe head read, "Hew," and the rust is misleading. Hew is a +1 battleaxe that deals maximum damage when the wielder hits a plant creature or an object made of wood. The axe's creator was a dwarf smith who feuded with the dryads of a forest where he cut firewood. Whoever carries the axe feels uneasy whenever he or she travels through a forest.
Which seems kind of underwhelming even after adding the gold bell because even if that is expensive, I had both dragons and their respective cults assaulting several caravans in route in and out of phandalin for the last few months (the town from the campaign) and that one is a mining town. The generator I was using puts that much money (sans the bell) on the low end of the expected hoard of a dragon wyrmling instead of a young dragon. Part of that can be explained as using part of the loot as maintainance costs of the cult, which includes equipment for Glasstaff's experiments, but still.
Should I change Venomfang's hoard to make it bigger? Should Cryovain's hoard use the young dragon or wyrmling table? Should Cryovain's hoard be bigger (his cult wouldn't use as much money, but they are raiding along the path to Triboar while Venomfang is attacking the route between Neverwinter and Waterdeep and has some pet bandits doing the same, so it is a more profitable route)? The story so far, with the raiding caravans, make me think I should just replace Cryovain's hoard with that of a Young dragon, which is worth several thousand gold pieces though that would leave each player suddenly with over 1000 gp.
The party is currently at level 5 and while it is theoretically 5 players strong, most sessions is only 3 players plus a sidekick or two,
I think you should increase Venomfang's hoard, since you're changing some of her backstory and giving her a direct connection to crime bosses and other servants. The sense I got from the original Adventure was that Venomfang was a young dragon who had just recently roosted in an abandoned wizard tower and was in the early stages of creating her hoard... the changes you made to the character makes her more established in the area and more likely to have been collecting treasure for longer.
Not sure if it helps, but per fizban’s, a young dragon hoard would have:
Young Dragon Hoards
4,200 (12d6 × 100) cp
14,000 (4d6 × 1,000) sp
4,200 (12d6 × 100) gp
210 (6d6 × 10) pp
4 (1d8) mundane items
21 (6d6) gems
5 (2d4) art objects
4 (1d8) magic items
Seems like fizban calls for way more than what’s there.
The only caution I’d have is to not go overboard on magic items so they aren’t too strong for their level as they go forward, but I remember LMoP being pretty stingy, so maybe it won’t be an issue.
I'd caution you against giving too much gold and magic items. The more powerful the characters are the harder it is to give a meaningful challenge and the easier it is for them to lose focus on the campaign as they start focusing on accumulating their own hoards. I also recommend limiting the utility of wealth don't let players just spend gold as ingredients to spells for example. I also wouldn't make it as simple as popping down to the magic shop to get reincarnation ingredients for the book price but make them find a seller and I'd also not tell players the value of items without a check with the appropriate tool. There are rules in xanathars just treat ingredients as consumable magic items of what ever rarity their value is closes too and items over 1000 gold magic items of rarity of what ever they are closest too. The goal is to muddy the relationship between gold and power so it doesn't dominate the game. You can also add flavorful hoard items that aren't clearly monetarily valuable or powerful but still add to the idea of the dragon being wealthy. For magic items I recommend consumable items and common items, I could give you a list but generally I'd say things like the imbued wood foci or scrolls (which can be flavored as all kinds of things like a scroll of poison spray can be a poison dust you blow from your palm).
Some more specific ideas
Living treasures, the green dragon stat block says they like collecting, sentient creatures, artistic pieces and things made of wood or other materials. Consider having prisoners in the hoard alive or dead as well as rare plants and artistic pieces.
Rare plants
spell ingredients like; Incense for find familiar, herbs for the reincarnation unguent, a mistletoe for good berry, a diviners sticks for augury or a diamond for a revivify
Poisonous animals
Skilled people like artists, alchemists and sages
A large wooden statue with gold trim maybe of a famous dnd figure( players may not recognize the value but something like that could easily be work 1500 gold if its good quality)
Poison from the dragon that its been giving to criminals. (that stuff is expensive)
A potion of poison because its a poison dragon
Maps or paintings of places you want to tease for later
Spell foci made of wood
a bottle of poison gas that casts the cloud kill spell when opened ( basically a scroll of cloud kill flavored as a potion, hilarious if the party doesn't know what it is and opens it)
A position that is maybe being overlooked is that while a particular dragon's hoard could be 15kgp, that particular dragon would have lived maybe a full century, maybe two and has formed a permanent connection to their lair and the region surrounding said lair. At every additional 15kgp benchmark, there would be an additional lair established, so as to prevent the loss of power felt by the dragon if one hoard were to be ransacked. This describes an adult or ancient dragon.
So for the description in the module, this is merely the young green dragon's individual hoard. There is no lair or regional effects associated with this creature because of the lack of a proper hoard. And due to it's lack of years, or lack of success they have yet to accrue much in the way of treasure.
As for the young blue's hoard total, this could reflect a young dragon that is on the cusp of adulthood, or one that is far more successfull than that of another dragon of its age. If the dragon has a hoard that would support it having permanently bonded to its lair and the surrounding region, you could introduce lair actions and regional traits to its statblock.
I recently encountered this with the description of hoard items in Fizban's, as it seems to be lacking the gp value of the mundane items, gems and art objects. If you were to use the DMG to assign a proper hoard , you will get a baseline for what each of those items are worth. The Fizban's known hoard value is around 5800gp +/- the items' value after listing.
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I am running a Dragon of Icespire Peak and Lost Mine of Phandelver combination campaign (spoilers ahead) and I am having an issue with the size of the dragon hoards for both Venomfang and Cryovain. In my campaign, both dragons were rivals to each other. Cryovain was changed to a Young Blue Dragon and took control of the cult of Talos, while on the other hand Venomfang, a Young Green Dragon, allied with the Wizard Glasstaff, who in this campaign is the leader of the local sect of the cult of Myrkul, in preparation for the expansions of Beyond Dragon of Icespire Peak.
A few sessions ago, my players completed a quest about killing an encampment of orcs in an abandoned temple of Savras and found a gold bell worth 2500 gp. While they were returning to town with their loot, they rolled badly on the encounter table and ran into Venomfang. The green dragon noticed the bell and fought them for it. The encounter ended with two players dead and the dragon flying away with the bell.
Since the players really liked their characters, I gave them a chance to resurrect them. Reidoth, a local druid and teacher of one of the surviving players knows the spell reincarnation, which let's him resurrect people who died within 10 days of the casting but it costs 1000 gp per cast in reagents. Due to the players not having that much money, their best choice to gather them is to kill the dragons and steal their hoard. They decided to go after Venomfang, since they know that she at least has the bell, which should cover the price of the resurrections.
This is where I come with the issue. I checked the hoards of the dragons in both modules. For starters, Cryovain has no hoard, which is because, I assume, it is left to the DM's discretion how big it should be. I went to a loot generator based on the tables from Fizban's treasury of dragons in order to save time when making Cryovain's hoard and it ended up being a lot bigger compared to Venomfang's, which according to the module would be:
An old wooden chest broken open on the tower floor holds the last of the dead wizard's treasure: 800 sp, 150 gp, four silver goblets set with moonstones (60 gp each), a scroll of misty step, and a scroll of lightning bolt. Venomfang spends much of his time greedily admiring the loot.
The dragon has barely noticed the most interesting item in its hoard. Beneath the coins is a rusty old battleaxe of dwarven manufacture. Runes in Dwarvish on the axe head read, "Hew," and the rust is misleading. Hew is a +1 battleaxe that deals maximum damage when the wielder hits a plant creature or an object made of wood. The axe's creator was a dwarf smith who feuded with the dryads of a forest where he cut firewood. Whoever carries the axe feels uneasy whenever he or she travels through a forest.
Which seems kind of underwhelming even after adding the gold bell because even if that is expensive, I had both dragons and their respective cults assaulting several caravans in route in and out of phandalin for the last few months (the town from the campaign) and that one is a mining town. The generator I was using puts that much money (sans the bell) on the low end of the expected hoard of a dragon wyrmling instead of a young dragon. Part of that can be explained as using part of the loot as maintainance costs of the cult, which includes equipment for Glasstaff's experiments, but still.
Should I change Venomfang's hoard to make it bigger? Should Cryovain's hoard use the young dragon or wyrmling table? Should Cryovain's hoard be bigger (his cult wouldn't use as much money, but they are raiding along the path to Triboar while Venomfang is attacking the route between Neverwinter and Waterdeep and has some pet bandits doing the same, so it is a more profitable route)? The story so far, with the raiding caravans, make me think I should just replace Cryovain's hoard with that of a Young dragon, which is worth several thousand gold pieces though that would leave each player suddenly with over 1000 gp.
The party is currently at level 5 and while it is theoretically 5 players strong, most sessions is only 3 players plus a sidekick or two,
I think you should increase Venomfang's hoard, since you're changing some of her backstory and giving her a direct connection to crime bosses and other servants. The sense I got from the original Adventure was that Venomfang was a young dragon who had just recently roosted in an abandoned wizard tower and was in the early stages of creating her hoard... the changes you made to the character makes her more established in the area and more likely to have been collecting treasure for longer.
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Not sure if it helps, but per fizban’s, a young dragon hoard would have:
Young Dragon Hoards
4,200 (12d6 × 100) cp
14,000 (4d6 × 1,000) sp
4,200 (12d6 × 100) gp
210 (6d6 × 10) pp
4 (1d8) mundane items
21 (6d6) gems
5 (2d4) art objects
4 (1d8) magic items
Seems like fizban calls for way more than what’s there.
The only caution I’d have is to not go overboard on magic items so they aren’t too strong for their level as they go forward, but I remember LMoP being pretty stingy, so maybe it won’t be an issue.
I'd caution you against giving too much gold and magic items. The more powerful the characters are the harder it is to give a meaningful challenge and the easier it is for them to lose focus on the campaign as they start focusing on accumulating their own hoards. I also recommend limiting the utility of wealth don't let players just spend gold as ingredients to spells for example. I also wouldn't make it as simple as popping down to the magic shop to get reincarnation ingredients for the book price but make them find a seller and I'd also not tell players the value of items without a check with the appropriate tool. There are rules in xanathars just treat ingredients as consumable magic items of what ever rarity their value is closes too and items over 1000 gold magic items of rarity of what ever they are closest too. The goal is to muddy the relationship between gold and power so it doesn't dominate the game. You can also add flavorful hoard items that aren't clearly monetarily valuable or powerful but still add to the idea of the dragon being wealthy. For magic items I recommend consumable items and common items, I could give you a list but generally I'd say things like the imbued wood foci or scrolls (which can be flavored as all kinds of things like a scroll of poison spray can be a poison dust you blow from your palm).
Some more specific ideas
Living treasures, the green dragon stat block says they like collecting, sentient creatures, artistic pieces and things made of wood or other materials. Consider having prisoners in the hoard alive or dead as well as rare plants and artistic pieces.
A position that is maybe being overlooked is that while a particular dragon's hoard could be 15kgp, that particular dragon would have lived maybe a full century, maybe two and has formed a permanent connection to their lair and the region surrounding said lair. At every additional 15kgp benchmark, there would be an additional lair established, so as to prevent the loss of power felt by the dragon if one hoard were to be ransacked. This describes an adult or ancient dragon.
So for the description in the module, this is merely the young green dragon's individual hoard. There is no lair or regional effects associated with this creature because of the lack of a proper hoard. And due to it's lack of years, or lack of success they have yet to accrue much in the way of treasure.
As for the young blue's hoard total, this could reflect a young dragon that is on the cusp of adulthood, or one that is far more successfull than that of another dragon of its age. If the dragon has a hoard that would support it having permanently bonded to its lair and the surrounding region, you could introduce lair actions and regional traits to its statblock.
I recently encountered this with the description of hoard items in Fizban's, as it seems to be lacking the gp value of the mundane items, gems and art objects. If you were to use the DMG to assign a proper hoard , you will get a baseline for what each of those items are worth. The Fizban's known hoard value is around 5800gp +/- the items' value after listing.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad