I have run several dnd campaigns and one of the problems I have had seems to keep coming up. Whenever my players kill a relatively powerful creature, they want to completely scavenge its body harvesting scales, teeth, claws etc. These creatures include dragons, remorhazes, and even smaller creatures like kobolds.
My problem with this is that it turns every combat into a killing spree so that the players can loot the corpses. I usually limit the amount of individual loot normal creatures have to stop this, but I can’t exactly say that all kobolds have no scales. I do understand that kobold scales are not a very sought after item but the plates of a remorhaz are. If the remorhaz is a giant creature, that is a lot of super strong plates, and fire teeth/pincers. I limit the amount of these things that the players can carry at a time, but it can still be a lot of extra loot if they take multiple trips.
Does anyone have any advice on this topic? I want to generally limit the amount of extra gold the players can get from scavenging corpses but I don’t want to be unrealistic or unreasonable.
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When in doubt throw the naked, fingerless, thief that you’ve been keeping in a sack and feeding rotten squirrels to into the fireworks tent hoping that it causes an explosion.
Probably the simplest answer if you don’t want to tell them that you’re just not going to support this is to just convert a portion of the coins you’d give them into materials they can sell for the same value.
Also, it’s not unreasonable to nix player attempts to squeeze further payouts from an encounter, particularly if it’s slowing down sessions. If it was meant to be a key part of the system, there’d be rules for it.
Yeah, if you're not willing to argue the case, just reduce the coins they find by however much the creature parts are worth. If they find that a more fun way to do things, let them have their fun. If it's boring for you...then just tell them straight that you'd rather spend the time fighting battles or whatever and work something out with them. Or just have them be an automatic find - at the end of the fight, tell them they find Remorhaz scales worth 50gp or whatever. It speeds up the process and they still get critter drops.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Items are only as sought after as you allow them to be. If there’s no market for remhoraz plates, then the point of scavenging for them is dramatically lessened. Realistically, the local armorer or tanner in some small town isn’t going to make some cloak of Fire resistance, because they wouldn’t have anyone to sell it to. Or they might not have the skill to work with the materials. So they’re not going to be interested in buying the stuff. And if your players want to just hoard them to bring to the city where they might be valuable, they first need to have the needed skills to harvest and preserve the materials so they don’t rot. Then how are they carrying them? And if they make a second trip, well, something else came along and ate the bits left lying there, or they decomposed. Or just say, you guy just fireballed, slashed and bludgeoned this thing to death. There’s no usable parts left.
It sounds like the players are imposing a loot system in your game, that you as a DM don't want to entertain. Perhaps it's something they're trying to port in from a video game (Monster Hunter?). Make it clear to them that the game just doesn't work like that. If they want to get into "harvesting" that requires a virtual whaling ship of gear to properly process and cure, etc. parts of something like a Rehmoraz.
There are 3rd party books on harvesting in 5e (some not all monsters can be processed into spell components, MCDM's Arcadia had a good article on modifying some spells with "exotic" components). If it's something they really want to do, you can pivot the game onto more of a Moby Dick level, but you'll want to lean into world building and the "reality" of harvesting, not treat every monster as a loot box. And really, if they're trying to sell kobold pelts and whatever, while maybe kobolds or orcs or whatever may be pariahs in your game, that sort of trophy collecting could be frowned upon or criminilized in your game's society. Make it clear this sort of conduct would make the PCs moral pariahs, gain them a wicked reputation, etc.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
First off, humanoids like kobolds should never have parts that are worth “harvesting.” Tell them that would be like skinning their human victims and trying to sell the skins. Creepy.
First off, humanoids like kobolds should never have parts that are worth “harvesting.” Tell them that would be like skinning their human victims and trying to sell the skins. Creepy.
I kind of feel like that ship has already sailed. I mean dragons are sentient creatures - arguably more advanced than kobolds in a lot of lore - and it's already established that people wear their scales. But yeah, you should at least draw the line at humanoids, and harvesting and crafting in a game where much of your "loot" comes from creatures you can converse with is going to be problematic for a lot of folks.
I could have sworn there was an official magic item that kind of addressed the harvesting thing, like a bag that you put stuff in and the gold equivalent comes out? Maybe it was just for currency exchange, but an item like that could be useful if you want to handwave the logistics of harvesting.
Now this system driving the party to want to kill everything is a whole different thing. If you set it up so killing = loot and not killing = no loot, you are indirectly encouraging your party to become murderhobos. In my campaign when I established a system where working with various factions produced benefits at least as attractive as the loot from wiping the factions out, suddenly they wanted to work with everyone. They basically became diplomatic envoys trying to get everyone to get along (aside from some of the unambiguously evil baddies like fiends). You need to add incentives for not killing, or at the very least include drawbacks for just killing everything they come across.
Yeah the kobold thing might have been an exaggeration. They do like to make weapons out of stuff like that though. As for non killing rewards I do include those and they can be good sometimes. I think the real problem is that the group I have is a bunch of my friends who are all teenagers and they sometimes fall into the trap of the “dnd isn’t real I can do whatever I want” mentality.
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When in doubt throw the naked, fingerless, thief that you’ve been keeping in a sack and feeding rotten squirrels to into the fireworks tent hoping that it causes an explosion.
I think the important thing is to know why your players are harvesting monster parts. Do they want them for crafting? For selling? For cooking? Knowing this ahead of time can help you determine what you actually need to prepare for.
I think if they're just looking to harvest parts to sell, you could just create a simple repeatable calculation. Maybe just something like... require a Survival Check. On a 15+ they get enough parts that they can sell for the Creature's CRx5 in GP, on a 20 they get CRx10, on a 25 CRx15, and if they manage a 30 it's CRx20. I'm sure those numbers would need adjusting if it proves to be too much or too little, but this way you don't have to come up with something specifically harvestable for every single creature they come across.
First off, humanoids like kobolds should never have parts that are worth “harvesting.” Tell them that would be like skinning their human victims and trying to sell the skins. Creepy.
Ogres are monsters. Ogre components must be harvested, otherwise there would be no such thing as Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Giants are monsters, with components harvested for Potions of Giant Strength. Kobolds and monsters, though I don't believe there is much use for Kobold components.
Kobolds are also a PC race though, which can raise some flags. And in most cases of magic items you can explain away the names as poetic rather than necessarily requiring components from the named beings. Dragons are the exception, but handily the material used is one they naturally shed, giving some wiggle room in the existence of the item.
Yeah the kobold thing might have been an exaggeration. They do like to make weapons out of stuff like that though. As for non killing rewards I do include those and they can be good sometimes. I think the real problem is that the group I have is a bunch of my friends who are all teenagers and they sometimes fall into the trap of the “dnd isn’t real I can do whatever I want” mentality.
Might be time to have a talk with them about expectations if they’re getting more into kicking over castles in the sandbox than you’d like.
First off, humanoids like kobolds should never have parts that are worth “harvesting.” Tell them that would be like skinning their human victims and trying to sell the skins. Creepy.
Ogres are monsters. Ogre components must be harvested, otherwise there would be no such thing as Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Giants are monsters, with components harvested for Potions of Giant Strength. Kobolds and monsters, though I don't believe there is much use for Kobold components.
I would simply tell the murder hobos that the OP is dealing with that many, if not most, creatures have no commercial value. There are also things called Survival Checks. "Oh, you tried to milk the poison gland of that giant snake, and rolled a 3? Can I have your char sheet, because your PC is now dead."
Technically humans are “monsters” too. But if their creature type is “humanoid,” (humans, elves, goblins, kobolds, gnomes, etc.) it shoulda’t be harvestable. You don’t actually need elf or dwarf parts to make boots of elvenkind or dwarven plate.
If harvesting monsters becomes an excessive problem in your campaign you can always make it more deterrent, have a low return with most people not interested in buying these. Continued practice could increase the smell carried the party to a point it become more and more repulsive to others, which may complicate interactions with NPCs etc..
How are they carrying all the components they're harvesting? What tools do they use to fully skin and dress a dragon carcass? What do they use to safely transport poisonous remains? How do you transport the icy frozen remains of a remorhaz without getting frostbite or without the cold ruining the skins? Who do they sell it all to? What's their overhead? Are they breaking even when you consider all the time and supplies needed versus what merchants are willing to pay for their goods?
If your players have an answer to all of those questions then I'd say let them open a monster salvage business. That sounds like a fun concept for a campaign, if that's how they wanna run it. They can have hirelings to help with the busy work when the fighting is done, they can set up an office in the main city, and travel the land looking for new markets for their niche product.
If they don't want to do all that, just explain that there's lots of steps and, if you don't do them all, you're not likely going to profit off of all the scavenging, and much of it (meat, for instance) would just spoil before you can cook it all yourself or sell it.
My players started into harvesting stuff and when they got to town, if it was a part I felt I might want to have something made from, a local craftsperson had a use for it. Oth things, the got a range of "Not interested as I have no use for...." to looks of disbelief and sometimes disgust. (The kobold in the group collects Goblin ears like a bounty. which is something, in the world they have appeared in, is NOT done lol)
If you like making homebrew stuff, their harvesting can be a good thing. As others have stated, if you find it cumbersome and disruptive, then maybe when they get to town, the parts they harvested are worthless. As DM you decide what is and isn't worth picking up, not the players.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
First off, humanoids like kobolds should never have parts that are worth “harvesting.” Tell them that would be like skinning their human victims and trying to sell the skins. Creepy.
Ogres are monsters. Ogre components must be harvested, otherwise there would be no such thing as Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Giants are monsters, with components harvested for Potions of Giant Strength. Kobolds and monsters, though I don't believe there is much use for Kobold components.
I would simply tell the murder hobos that the OP is dealing with that many, if not most, creatures have no commercial value. There are also things called Survival Checks. "Oh, you tried to milk the poison gland of that giant snake, and rolled a 3? Can I have your char sheet, because your PC is now dead."
Technically humans are “monsters” too. But if their creature type is “humanoid,” (humans, elves, goblins, kobolds, gnomes, etc.) it shoulda’t be harvestable. You don’t actually need elf or dwarf parts to make boots of elvenkind or dwarven plate.
Same goes for the Gauntlets of Ogre Power- they get their name because they give the wearer the strength of an ogre, not because someone chopped the arms of an ogre and fashioned them into a pair of Hulk Hands.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
You could make the components they harvested worthless because they did it wrong and either punched to many holes it it or ruined it by contaminating it with other magics cast on it to kill it.
You can let them find more coin and lower the reward for harvesting all at the same time.
First off, humanoids like kobolds should never have parts that are worth “harvesting.” Tell them that would be like skinning their human victims and trying to sell the skins. Creepy.
Ogres are monsters. Ogre components must be harvested, otherwise there would be no such thing as Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Giants are monsters, with components harvested for Potions of Giant Strength. Kobolds and monsters, though I don't believe there is much use for Kobold components.
I would simply tell the murder hobos that the OP is dealing with that many, if not most, creatures have no commercial value. There are also things called Survival Checks. "Oh, you tried to milk the poison gland of that giant snake, and rolled a 3? Can I have your char sheet, because your PC is now dead."
Technically humans are “monsters” too. But if their creature type is “humanoid,” (humans, elves, goblins, kobolds, gnomes, etc.) it shoulda’t be harvestable. You don’t actually need elf or dwarf parts to make boots of elvenkind or dwarven plate.
Same goes for the Gauntlets of Ogre Power- they get their name because they give the wearer the strength of an ogre, not because someone chopped the arms of an ogre and fashioned them into a pair of Hulk Hands.
You know, that would be an interesting take on the item. I wouldn't make it a regular thing, just one unique pair.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Personally I strongly recommend against going all "bait and switch" on them with the parts; that's just make things feel adversarial between the players and DM, which is generally not a good dynamic. If you want to support it go for it, and if not don't be afraid to put your foot down a bit that they'll be getting coins and treasure as loot and they don't need to stop for an hour after every fight to try and scavenge monster parts.
Most monster parts won't really have significant value beyond being souvenirs, and getting good value will require being quite careful about how you kill them plus someone who's skilled at taxidermy (which doesn't directly correspond to any existing proficiencies; it's probably most closely related to leatherworking).
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Hello!
I have run several dnd campaigns and one of the problems I have had seems to keep coming up. Whenever my players kill a relatively powerful creature, they want to completely scavenge its body harvesting scales, teeth, claws etc. These creatures include dragons, remorhazes, and even smaller creatures like kobolds.
My problem with this is that it turns every combat into a killing spree so that the players can loot the corpses. I usually limit the amount of individual loot normal creatures have to stop this, but I can’t exactly say that all kobolds have no scales. I do understand that kobold scales are not a very sought after item but the plates of a remorhaz are. If the remorhaz is a giant creature, that is a lot of super strong plates, and fire teeth/pincers. I limit the amount of these things that the players can carry at a time, but it can still be a lot of extra loot if they take multiple trips.
Does anyone have any advice on this topic? I want to generally limit the amount of extra gold the players can get from scavenging corpses but I don’t want to be unrealistic or unreasonable.
When in doubt throw the naked, fingerless, thief that you’ve been keeping in a sack and feeding rotten squirrels to into the fireworks tent hoping that it causes an explosion.
Probably the simplest answer if you don’t want to tell them that you’re just not going to support this is to just convert a portion of the coins you’d give them into materials they can sell for the same value.
Also, it’s not unreasonable to nix player attempts to squeeze further payouts from an encounter, particularly if it’s slowing down sessions. If it was meant to be a key part of the system, there’d be rules for it.
Yeah, if you're not willing to argue the case, just reduce the coins they find by however much the creature parts are worth. If they find that a more fun way to do things, let them have their fun. If it's boring for you...then just tell them straight that you'd rather spend the time fighting battles or whatever and work something out with them. Or just have them be an automatic find - at the end of the fight, tell them they find Remorhaz scales worth 50gp or whatever. It speeds up the process and they still get critter drops.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Items are only as sought after as you allow them to be. If there’s no market for remhoraz plates, then the point of scavenging for them is dramatically lessened. Realistically, the local armorer or tanner in some small town isn’t going to make some cloak of Fire resistance, because they wouldn’t have anyone to sell it to. Or they might not have the skill to work with the materials. So they’re not going to be interested in buying the stuff.
And if your players want to just hoard them to bring to the city where they might be valuable, they first need to have the needed skills to harvest and preserve the materials so they don’t rot. Then how are they carrying them? And if they make a second trip, well, something else came along and ate the bits left lying there, or they decomposed.
Or just say, you guy just fireballed, slashed and bludgeoned this thing to death. There’s no usable parts left.
It sounds like the players are imposing a loot system in your game, that you as a DM don't want to entertain. Perhaps it's something they're trying to port in from a video game (Monster Hunter?). Make it clear to them that the game just doesn't work like that. If they want to get into "harvesting" that requires a virtual whaling ship of gear to properly process and cure, etc. parts of something like a Rehmoraz.
There are 3rd party books on harvesting in 5e (some not all monsters can be processed into spell components, MCDM's Arcadia had a good article on modifying some spells with "exotic" components). If it's something they really want to do, you can pivot the game onto more of a Moby Dick level, but you'll want to lean into world building and the "reality" of harvesting, not treat every monster as a loot box. And really, if they're trying to sell kobold pelts and whatever, while maybe kobolds or orcs or whatever may be pariahs in your game, that sort of trophy collecting could be frowned upon or criminilized in your game's society. Make it clear this sort of conduct would make the PCs moral pariahs, gain them a wicked reputation, etc.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
First off, humanoids like kobolds should never have parts that are worth “harvesting.” Tell them that would be like skinning their human victims and trying to sell the skins. Creepy.
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I kind of feel like that ship has already sailed. I mean dragons are sentient creatures - arguably more advanced than kobolds in a lot of lore - and it's already established that people wear their scales. But yeah, you should at least draw the line at humanoids, and harvesting and crafting in a game where much of your "loot" comes from creatures you can converse with is going to be problematic for a lot of folks.
I could have sworn there was an official magic item that kind of addressed the harvesting thing, like a bag that you put stuff in and the gold equivalent comes out? Maybe it was just for currency exchange, but an item like that could be useful if you want to handwave the logistics of harvesting.
Now this system driving the party to want to kill everything is a whole different thing. If you set it up so killing = loot and not killing = no loot, you are indirectly encouraging your party to become murderhobos. In my campaign when I established a system where working with various factions produced benefits at least as attractive as the loot from wiping the factions out, suddenly they wanted to work with everyone. They basically became diplomatic envoys trying to get everyone to get along (aside from some of the unambiguously evil baddies like fiends). You need to add incentives for not killing, or at the very least include drawbacks for just killing everything they come across.
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(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Yeah the kobold thing might have been an exaggeration. They do like to make weapons out of stuff like that though. As for non killing rewards I do include those and they can be good sometimes. I think the real problem is that the group I have is a bunch of my friends who are all teenagers and they sometimes fall into the trap of the “dnd isn’t real I can do whatever I want” mentality.
When in doubt throw the naked, fingerless, thief that you’ve been keeping in a sack and feeding rotten squirrels to into the fireworks tent hoping that it causes an explosion.
I think the important thing is to know why your players are harvesting monster parts. Do they want them for crafting? For selling? For cooking? Knowing this ahead of time can help you determine what you actually need to prepare for.
I think if they're just looking to harvest parts to sell, you could just create a simple repeatable calculation. Maybe just something like... require a Survival Check. On a 15+ they get enough parts that they can sell for the Creature's CRx5 in GP, on a 20 they get CRx10, on a 25 CRx15, and if they manage a 30 it's CRx20. I'm sure those numbers would need adjusting if it proves to be too much or too little, but this way you don't have to come up with something specifically harvestable for every single creature they come across.
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Kobolds are also a PC race though, which can raise some flags. And in most cases of magic items you can explain away the names as poetic rather than necessarily requiring components from the named beings. Dragons are the exception, but handily the material used is one they naturally shed, giving some wiggle room in the existence of the item.
Might be time to have a talk with them about expectations if they’re getting more into kicking over castles in the sandbox than you’d like.
Technically humans are “monsters” too. But if their creature type is “humanoid,” (humans, elves, goblins, kobolds, gnomes, etc.) it shoulda’t be harvestable. You don’t actually need elf or dwarf parts to make boots of elvenkind or dwarven plate.
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If harvesting monsters becomes an excessive problem in your campaign you can always make it more deterrent, have a low return with most people not interested in buying these. Continued practice could increase the smell carried the party to a point it become more and more repulsive to others, which may complicate interactions with NPCs etc..
Harvesting intelligent creatures will probably lead to those same creatures hunting the party.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
How are they carrying all the components they're harvesting? What tools do they use to fully skin and dress a dragon carcass? What do they use to safely transport poisonous remains? How do you transport the icy frozen remains of a remorhaz without getting frostbite or without the cold ruining the skins? Who do they sell it all to? What's their overhead? Are they breaking even when you consider all the time and supplies needed versus what merchants are willing to pay for their goods?
If your players have an answer to all of those questions then I'd say let them open a monster salvage business. That sounds like a fun concept for a campaign, if that's how they wanna run it. They can have hirelings to help with the busy work when the fighting is done, they can set up an office in the main city, and travel the land looking for new markets for their niche product.
If they don't want to do all that, just explain that there's lots of steps and, if you don't do them all, you're not likely going to profit off of all the scavenging, and much of it (meat, for instance) would just spoil before you can cook it all yourself or sell it.
My players started into harvesting stuff and when they got to town, if it was a part I felt I might want to have something made from, a local craftsperson had a use for it. Oth things, the got a range of "Not interested as I have no use for...." to looks of disbelief and sometimes disgust. (The kobold in the group collects Goblin ears like a bounty. which is something, in the world they have appeared in, is NOT done lol)
If you like making homebrew stuff, their harvesting can be a good thing. As others have stated, if you find it cumbersome and disruptive, then maybe when they get to town, the parts they harvested are worthless. As DM you decide what is and isn't worth picking up, not the players.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Same goes for the Gauntlets of Ogre Power- they get their name because they give the wearer the strength of an ogre, not because someone chopped the arms of an ogre and fashioned them into a pair of Hulk Hands.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
You could make the components they harvested worthless because they did it wrong and either punched to many holes it it or ruined it by contaminating it with other magics cast on it to kill it.
You can let them find more coin and lower the reward for harvesting all at the same time.
You know, that would be an interesting take on the item. I wouldn't make it a regular thing, just one unique pair.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Personally I strongly recommend against going all "bait and switch" on them with the parts; that's just make things feel adversarial between the players and DM, which is generally not a good dynamic. If you want to support it go for it, and if not don't be afraid to put your foot down a bit that they'll be getting coins and treasure as loot and they don't need to stop for an hour after every fight to try and scavenge monster parts.
Most monster parts won't really have significant value beyond being souvenirs, and getting good value will require being quite careful about how you kill them plus someone who's skilled at taxidermy (which doesn't directly correspond to any existing proficiencies; it's probably most closely related to leatherworking).