I"m trying to flesh out the details of the vault of a noble family for my campaign. I'm not sure how much of the specifics are that important, but what I've got so far is that there's some amount of magic involved in the concealment/containment of the vault in cellar of their main house. I'm not sure what sort of magical key/password would make sense, or how much money a small noble family is likely to have stored away. Is there anywhere to get a good benchmark for that sort of thing?
For money you could check out the treasure hoard tables in the DMG. As for concealment, check out the arcane lock or some first/second level illusion spells. Other than that, just use any plot devices you need.
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Anything is edible if you try hard enough!
I am a swimmer. If you see me running, you should run too, because it means something horrible is chasing me.
Where's your world at in general? In the Renaissance, a banker's family would have a big strongbox with a lock in a special room of the house where the door was locked and the window had bars and there would be family guards watching the room. The strongbox would be made of wood, but too big to be carried by thieves. Eventually they started making strongboxes out of metal. A vault, as you're thinking of it here, is basically a big walk-in safe. It's for someone who has enough to fill it, not the sort of thing a minor noble family would need.
In Renaissance + magic D&D world, who would even know?
How rich are this family? in enough money trouble that they might betray the kingdom or need to sell land? How much cash did the Downton Abbey people have lying around? Would the story be more fun if there were a huge Scrooge McDuck gold swimming pool?
A small noble house would, commonly, have a safe in a wall. This could be hidden behind something (the classic being a picture or a mirror). Then add magic.
Are the nobles capable of magic themselves? if so, then it's likely to be magically secure. I like the idea of mirrors for this sort of thing. for example; a mirror is found to be hinged but there's nothing behind it - it will only reveal the safe if opened by the noble - but, fortunately, the noble is vain and has lots of pictures of themselves around, so hold one up and then open the mirror to reveal the safe.
In the cellar, you are confused to find a mirror on the wall under the stairs - directly below the door at the top of the stairs, on the same wall. If you lie down on the floor under the stairs, you find gravity shifts and you can "climb" the underside of the stairs, moving sideways into the mirror, which is now an entrance to a secret room.
If they aren't magic, they will probably have it simply hidden well and impossible to carry out.
Small as in Halfling, Goblin, or Gnome? For Halfling, it would probably be ornate in a room reserved for family and friends - rather straight-forward with standard locking protocols. For Goblin, it could be a pit covered in leaves that everyone knows is there but is too scared to even consider burglarizing it. For Gnome, it'd be elaborate, ornate, and overly complicated - and, because of that, be mostly empty because it's too much of a bother to put anything in it unless it's something extremely sensitive.
A general rule of thumb is: The more complicated locks mean fewer things of higher value. This isn't always the case because rich people in the Realms are sometimes (maybe often) crazy - usually unnecessarily paranoid. (EDIT: You could find a vault filled with worn-out family shoes from over the generations.)
A variation of the mirror idea is that it could be "spot the difference". Something's different in the reflection which points to either the position of the safe/vault, a part of the opening process of the safe/vault, or a further clue to the safe/vault that would true versus all other contradictory clues in the room that would be false.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I think glyphs of warding should be considered. A small noble house might have a basic anti-tampering one primed with evocation, but I like to imagine major noble houses having elaborate interconnected glyphs of warding, set to go off if various spells are cast or other glyphs are tampered with.
If I had to keep my money in my house in a D&D setting, which is mostly in coins, I would hollow out a sturdy chair leg and put the coins in there, except for a couple silvers and a handful of coppers, which I would keep in a pouch. The top of the chair leg would have a finial that could be removed, and the chair upended and all the coins spilled out.
I might have another hollowed out wooden "post" that contained my gems.
Apart from that, I would have a significant amount of 'trade goods' that could be used in place of coins, hoping many bandits would overlook what was in the kitchen.
I would have a chest at the foot of my bed. This chest would have the winter blankets inside, but in the last blanket, I would have many valuable things wrapped up with it.
In the basement, there would be a barrel of flour, or something else that could tolerate a little moisture. Inside the flour would be a pouch with a number of valuable things as well.
I might well have a number of bottles of wine in the house. One of these bottles would be just a bottle of water. Also in the water are diamonds that would disappear from view when placed in water, but if you shake the bottle they might rattle around a little. I guess a red bottle could hold water with rubies, and a blue bottle could hold water with sapphires.
So lots of stuff would be hidden and it would be spread out so you would have to look a long time to find it all, and you certainly wouldn't find it when you found the first stash.
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Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Small as in Halfling, Goblin, or Gnome? For Halfling, it would probably be ornate in a room reserved for family and friends - rather straight-forward with standard locking protocols. For Goblin, it could be a pit covered in leaves that everyone knows is there but is too scared to even consider burglarizing it. For Gnome, it'd be elaborate, ornate, and overly complicated - and, because of that, be mostly empty because it's too much of a bother to put anything in it unless it's something extremely sensitive.
A general rule of thumb is: The more complicated locks mean fewer things of higher value. This isn't always the case because rich people in the Realms are sometimes (maybe often) crazy - usually unnecessarily paranoid. (EDIT: You could find a vault filled with worn-out family shoes from over the generations.)
A variation of the mirror idea is that it could be "spot the difference". Something's different in the reflection which points to either the position of the safe/vault, a part of the opening process of the safe/vault, or a further clue to the safe/vault that would true versus all other contradictory clues in the room that would be false.
i dont think that is what they meant by small (they small in political stature not psychical)
One way is to have correspondence players...who are really NPCs in your campaign. Give them a certain amount of wealth and income and tell them that NPCs are casing their home base, probably gonna try to steal their stuff while their adventuring or asleep. Nothing is as inventive as a player who thinks the DM is gonna steal their stuff. Then implement the ideas of those players to the NPC.
As for how much money do they have? Take what you think is a lot, like 2,000gp, then double or triple that. D&D has an obscene amount of currency compared to history. Look at all the spells that require the expenditure and consumption of 1,000gp diamonds, a diamond is only worth 1,000 as long as someone in the game world actually has 1,000 to throw away on such a lavish trinket. Marco Polo, not even a lesser noble by comparison, was able to purchase retirement levels of trade goods with the silver they brought with them because the Chinese were so desperate for silver currency. The Silver:Gold ratio was like 100:1 before the Spanish outposts in the New World. Fun fact, Puerto Vallarta was the other half of Spanish wealth because all the silver mined in the New World colonies was loaded onto trade ships sailing west to capitalize on the favorable Chinese desperation for silver currency discovered by Marco Polo. An idea I've used in my home brew worlds is make wealth non portable, like a warehouse filled with tons of textiles.
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I"m trying to flesh out the details of the vault of a noble family for my campaign. I'm not sure how much of the specifics are that important, but what I've got so far is that there's some amount of magic involved in the concealment/containment of the vault in cellar of their main house. I'm not sure what sort of magical key/password would make sense, or how much money a small noble family is likely to have stored away. Is there anywhere to get a good benchmark for that sort of thing?
For money you could check out the treasure hoard tables in the DMG. As for concealment, check out the arcane lock or some first/second level illusion spells. Other than that, just use any plot devices you need.
Anything is edible if you try hard enough!
I am a swimmer. If you see me running, you should run too, because it means something horrible is chasing me.
Where's your world at in general? In the Renaissance, a banker's family would have a big strongbox with a lock in a special room of the house where the door was locked and the window had bars and there would be family guards watching the room. The strongbox would be made of wood, but too big to be carried by thieves. Eventually they started making strongboxes out of metal. A vault, as you're thinking of it here, is basically a big walk-in safe. It's for someone who has enough to fill it, not the sort of thing a minor noble family would need.
In Renaissance + magic D&D world, who would even know?
How rich are this family? in enough money trouble that they might betray the kingdom or need to sell land? How much cash did the Downton Abbey people have lying around? Would the story be more fun if there were a huge Scrooge McDuck gold swimming pool?
A small noble house would, commonly, have a safe in a wall. This could be hidden behind something (the classic being a picture or a mirror). Then add magic.
Are the nobles capable of magic themselves? if so, then it's likely to be magically secure. I like the idea of mirrors for this sort of thing. for example; a mirror is found to be hinged but there's nothing behind it - it will only reveal the safe if opened by the noble - but, fortunately, the noble is vain and has lots of pictures of themselves around, so hold one up and then open the mirror to reveal the safe.
In the cellar, you are confused to find a mirror on the wall under the stairs - directly below the door at the top of the stairs, on the same wall. If you lie down on the floor under the stairs, you find gravity shifts and you can "climb" the underside of the stairs, moving sideways into the mirror, which is now an entrance to a secret room.
If they aren't magic, they will probably have it simply hidden well and impossible to carry out.
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Small as in Halfling, Goblin, or Gnome? For Halfling, it would probably be ornate in a room reserved for family and friends - rather straight-forward with standard locking protocols. For Goblin, it could be a pit covered in leaves that everyone knows is there but is too scared to even consider burglarizing it. For Gnome, it'd be elaborate, ornate, and overly complicated - and, because of that, be mostly empty because it's too much of a bother to put anything in it unless it's something extremely sensitive.
A general rule of thumb is: The more complicated locks mean fewer things of higher value. This isn't always the case because rich people in the Realms are sometimes (maybe often) crazy - usually unnecessarily paranoid. (EDIT: You could find a vault filled with worn-out family shoes from over the generations.)
A variation of the mirror idea is that it could be "spot the difference". Something's different in the reflection which points to either the position of the safe/vault, a part of the opening process of the safe/vault, or a further clue to the safe/vault that would true versus all other contradictory clues in the room that would be false.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I think glyphs of warding should be considered. A small noble house might have a basic anti-tampering one primed with evocation, but I like to imagine major noble houses having elaborate interconnected glyphs of warding, set to go off if various spells are cast or other glyphs are tampered with.
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If I had to keep my money in my house in a D&D setting, which is mostly in coins, I would hollow out a sturdy chair leg and put the coins in there, except for a couple silvers and a handful of coppers, which I would keep in a pouch. The top of the chair leg would have a finial that could be removed, and the chair upended and all the coins spilled out.
I might have another hollowed out wooden "post" that contained my gems.
Apart from that, I would have a significant amount of 'trade goods' that could be used in place of coins, hoping many bandits would overlook what was in the kitchen.
I would have a chest at the foot of my bed. This chest would have the winter blankets inside, but in the last blanket, I would have many valuable things wrapped up with it.
In the basement, there would be a barrel of flour, or something else that could tolerate a little moisture. Inside the flour would be a pouch with a number of valuable things as well.
I might well have a number of bottles of wine in the house. One of these bottles would be just a bottle of water. Also in the water are diamonds that would disappear from view when placed in water, but if you shake the bottle they might rattle around a little. I guess a red bottle could hold water with rubies, and a blue bottle could hold water with sapphires.
So lots of stuff would be hidden and it would be spread out so you would have to look a long time to find it all, and you certainly wouldn't find it when you found the first stash.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
i dont think that is what they meant by small (they small in political stature not psychical)
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One way is to have correspondence players...who are really NPCs in your campaign. Give them a certain amount of wealth and income and tell them that NPCs are casing their home base, probably gonna try to steal their stuff while their adventuring or asleep. Nothing is as inventive as a player who thinks the DM is gonna steal their stuff. Then implement the ideas of those players to the NPC.
As for how much money do they have? Take what you think is a lot, like 2,000gp, then double or triple that. D&D has an obscene amount of currency compared to history. Look at all the spells that require the expenditure and consumption of 1,000gp diamonds, a diamond is only worth 1,000 as long as someone in the game world actually has 1,000 to throw away on such a lavish trinket. Marco Polo, not even a lesser noble by comparison, was able to purchase retirement levels of trade goods with the silver they brought with them because the Chinese were so desperate for silver currency. The Silver:Gold ratio was like 100:1 before the Spanish outposts in the New World. Fun fact, Puerto Vallarta was the other half of Spanish wealth because all the silver mined in the New World colonies was loaded onto trade ships sailing west to capitalize on the favorable Chinese desperation for silver currency discovered by Marco Polo. An idea I've used in my home brew worlds is make wealth non portable, like a warehouse filled with tons of textiles.