Does anyone have a good guideline for selling parts of monsters, specifically hides. One of the players in my campaign is a hunter/trapper and would sell the hides of the animals she caught. In the beginning it was easy, 1-2c for rabbits, squirrels, etc. 1g for a Dire wolf. Now that I'm introducing higher CR creatures, I'm trying to figure out how much to charge. In our last session, the group took down a Plesiosaur and she was able to retrieve the corpse before it sank. Thanks for any advice.
Honestly, 5e doesn’t really have any good tools for these kind of mid-adventure sideline ventures. Practically speaking, it’d probably take several days work and multiple hands to tan that much hide, so it’s not really a practical exercise unless this was a one and done monster hunt. And that assumes the hide is still in good condition after being repeatedly slashed, stabbed, and blasted with magic.
Honestly, my first advice is to just phase this out. As the party levels the gold they’re making from adventuring should far outstrip what someone can make as a sideline selling pelts both as a matter of realism and because it’s not a great table dynamic for one player to be making significantly more gold than the others. If you really want to stick with it, I’d suggest keeping it simple; they can only skin some “boss monster” type near the end of the adventure rather than stopping for it after every battle with some beast or monster, Survival check against a DC of say 15 + 1d10 for maybe 3d10 gold.
The other option that occurs to me is to just reflavor part of what would be the gold reward from a major monster kill as selling parts, using the gems/art objects info from the DMG to get a price baseline. Though if you’re doing that you want to make sure the gold is being spread evenly between the party.
Thanks for the tips! These will be quite helpful. I do plan on phasing this out at higher levels. Right now, the party is still low level, and their missions have been short. It would be impractical for the character to lug a bunch of hides through a long dungeon crawl or other such mission. Thanks again.
Most of the time, value for corpses will be specified ahead of time (i.e. the PCs will know "<individual/group> is offering <reward> for <component> of <monster>") and is thus effectively a quest. Such rewards would behave like any other quest reward. In a D&D setting, typical reasons that justify the effort of hunting down something high CR are as a component for a magic item or ritual, or as a trophy. A PC can try to reverse this process (acquire the parts, hope someone wants them), but most of the time doing so won't work.
Does anyone have a good guideline for selling parts of monsters, specifically hides. One of the players in my campaign is a hunter/trapper and would sell the hides of the animals she caught. In the beginning it was easy, 1-2c for rabbits, squirrels, etc. 1g for a Dire wolf. Now that I'm introducing higher CR creatures, I'm trying to figure out how much to charge. In our last session, the group took down a Plesiosaur and she was able to retrieve the corpse before it sank. Thanks for any advice.
Honestly, 5e doesn’t really have any good tools for these kind of mid-adventure sideline ventures. Practically speaking, it’d probably take several days work and multiple hands to tan that much hide, so it’s not really a practical exercise unless this was a one and done monster hunt. And that assumes the hide is still in good condition after being repeatedly slashed, stabbed, and blasted with magic.
Honestly, my first advice is to just phase this out. As the party levels the gold they’re making from adventuring should far outstrip what someone can make as a sideline selling pelts both as a matter of realism and because it’s not a great table dynamic for one player to be making significantly more gold than the others. If you really want to stick with it, I’d suggest keeping it simple; they can only skin some “boss monster” type near the end of the adventure rather than stopping for it after every battle with some beast or monster, Survival check against a DC of say 15 + 1d10 for maybe 3d10 gold.
I don't know about selling the kills for money, but here is a handy resource I found that has ideas for uses for monster parts.
https://www.gmbinder.com/share/-L9zV7_eIrs3bqQ_cNd5#p75
The other option that occurs to me is to just reflavor part of what would be the gold reward from a major monster kill as selling parts, using the gems/art objects info from the DMG to get a price baseline. Though if you’re doing that you want to make sure the gold is being spread evenly between the party.
Thanks for the tips! These will be quite helpful. I do plan on phasing this out at higher levels. Right now, the party is still low level, and their missions have been short. It would be impractical for the character to lug a bunch of hides through a long dungeon crawl or other such mission. Thanks again.
Most of the time, value for corpses will be specified ahead of time (i.e. the PCs will know "<individual/group> is offering <reward> for <component> of <monster>") and is thus effectively a quest. Such rewards would behave like any other quest reward. In a D&D setting, typical reasons that justify the effort of hunting down something high CR are as a component for a magic item or ritual, or as a trophy. A PC can try to reverse this process (acquire the parts, hope someone wants them), but most of the time doing so won't work.