The silver baton torch stub in T1

Bullgrit

Adventurer
Read the attached scan of the relevant room in the AD&D1 module T1 The Village of Hommlet.

As a DM, how would/did you handle or describe this situation? How easy or difficult should noticing and taking this silver baton be? Is this a hidden treasure?

As a Player, how would/did you handle or react to this situation? How easy or difficult should noticing and taking this silver baton be? Is this a hidden treasure?

Bullgrit
 

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I think it should be difficult as the room has obviously been looted, but having a thief in the group, they'll likely spend forever in each room to find any possible scrap of loot that might have been missed. I forget the rules mechanics for 2e off the top of my head, but in 3e they'd take 20 on the room...
 

Back in the day, I would've told anybody who looked at it what was going on.

"I look at the torches"

"Yeah, one of them is actually a silver doo-dad."

But frankly, I quit putting stuff like this in my dungeons pretty quickly.
 

As a DM, how would/did you handle or describe this situation? How easy or difficult should noticing and taking this silver baton be? Is this a hidden treasure?

I think it's good that you included the previous room, because it provides context.

My description, based on "This was once the domocile of the major domo of the castle, but is stripped of everything but broken and ruined furnishings now":

"This room was appears to have once been a grand bedroom or audience chamber. The walls are lined with peeling and faded paint, and a row of sconces to either side. One black cresset lies neglected on the floor against the wall. In the middle of the room you enter you see a smashed wooden chest, its fittings now rusted red and pitted with age. A large armoire lies against the left wall, similarly rudely splintered. On the opposite wall is a fireplace, now choked with rubble and bricks. The remains of a wooden railing and gate lie toppled halfway across the room. Beyond is the bottom frame of a large bed, enclosing a rotten pile of down and mixed linen. The dust is heavy everywhere and scraps of cloths lie rotting on the floor."

As a Player, how would/did you handle or react to this situation?

If I was under time pressure, this would likely prompt me to search the walls for hidden doors and then move on. The description conveys to me that this room has been picked over already and little of value is likely to be found here. Indeed, that's true, as the 30 gp baton is barely worth taking compared to its weight in many circumstances, even if you could find it. Also, even if I was inclined to make a search, if I'd searched several similar rooms and found nothing, I might hesistate to make an exhausitive search again. And generally speaking, rooms like this are seldom worth searching, as its 50/50 that you find something you'd rather not find like a patch of yellow mold or some other dungeon hazard.

If I wasn't under time pressure, this would likely be a 'we search everything in the room'/'take 20' situation and hope the DM let's me hand wave the details of the search - clueing me into the fact that the room is empty of danger.

How easy or difficult should noticing and taking this silver baton be? Is this a hidden treasure?

In 3e terms, finding the silver baton requires one of two courses of action.

A proposition that you investigate the cresset, and a DC 15 Appraisal check or a) recognition by the player that if the cresset was iron it would be rusted red like the chest furnishings, not black or b) an attempt to remove the corrosion from the baton with a mild acid or vigorous rubbing resulting in a much easier appraisal check (DC 5 or something) when the silver color is revealed.

A proposition to search everything in the room, and an accompanying DC 15 Appraisal check.

Since the cresset is apparant from my casual description of the contents, its a fairly trivial search check so I haven't included it here. With more time to think, I probably could add 1d6 peices of nearly worthless junk to be found on trivial searches and then mix the cresset in amongst them. If the players were very experienced, I might justify a DC 20 Appraisal check on the grounds the clearly someone has searched this room before and missed it.

I consider this to be in context hidden treasure. This is a good basic treasure finding problem for an inexperienced adventurer.
 
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i would require a success search check.

the baton could easily be covered in soot/ash or tarnished from years in a dungeon.
 

. . . the 30 gp baton is barely worth taking compared to its weight in many circumstances, even if you could find it.
Interesting point.

What's the purpose [of an adventure designer] for placing this treasure in the room like this?

What's the purpose [of a DM] for making this treasure require a lot of effort on the part of the Player to find it? (The effort is mostly from the Player with the DM, not so much the character with the in-game room.)

Is any real benefit, for the game/campaign as a whole, gained or given by having this treasure easy or difficult to find and take? Is this rewarding Players/PCs or training Players/PCs?

Especially considering that another room, "It is possible to spend considerable time searching the litter here, but nothing of value will be found." There's no guarantee of which room the PCs will come to first.

I've always thought that slightly hidden treasure rewards PCs/Players for being curious and exploring. But extremely hidden treasure often serves no purpose, because if it's not found, it might as well not be there at all. Especially with dungeons like the Moathouse in this instance that probably won't be re-explored after the initial run through and clearing.

And I've always thought that ocassional unhidden, obvious treasure sets up PCs/Players for potential traps later in the game. If the PCs/Players know that sometimes treasure really is just accidentally dropped by monsters and such, finding that little trinket out in the open won't set off all their danger alarms, every time. Besides, for in-game verisimilitude, sometimes little treasures are dropped and lost by people, and found by others.

Bullgrit
 

What's the purpose [of an adventure designer] for placing this treasure in the room like this?

What's the purpose [of a DM] for making this treasure require a lot of effort on the part of the Player to find it? (The effort is mostly from the Player with the DM, not so much the character with the in-game room.)

Is any real benefit, for the game/campaign as a whole, gained or given by having this treasure easy or difficult to find and take? Is this rewarding Players/PCs or training Players/PCs?

Like all positive reinforcement, it's both. It rewards them for the successful search as well as teaches them to pay attention to what the DM is saying, to visualize what the DM is saying.

I've always thought that slightly hidden treasure rewards PCs/Players for being curious and exploring. But extremely hidden treasure often serves no purpose, because if it's not found, it might as well not be there at all. Especially with dungeons like the Moathouse in this instance that probably won't be re-explored after the initial run through and clearing.

It helps mark the difference, sometimes, between the clever searchers and the really clever searchers. Or at least the really persistent. And in some cases, it helps add a bit of appropriate character to the adventure. An avaricious, paranoid wizard isn't going to just hide his stuff in a casual way. He'll use something like Leomund's Tiny Chest to do it or a pocket dimension hidden in some devious manner to hide his serious valuables - keeping only the stuff he needs readily in such a vulerable place as the cookie jar stash. I certainly wouldn't go to that level for any wizard who wasn't completely paranoid about losing his stuff to thieves though. Your basic friendly wizard in a city with good law and order and few burglaries would be more lax in his security. But in a city run by thieves like the City of Greyhawk, I can imagine a bit more challenge to the typical stash of loot.
 

plus it gives something for which the referee can build a back story.

the silver baton once cleaned reveals an emblem of a long lost noble line of elves... the PCs won't recognize the emblem but can ask around.

write a side trek adventure
 

IMO, it's simple simulationism. Gygax decided that in his simulated fantasy world, there would occasionally be minor treasures that would be present in already looted areas because they were extremely difficult to find. I don't think much thought was given to whether the PCs would or wouldn't find the torch stub. It is there as an element of world building. Whether such things are "necessary" has more to do with satisfying the DM's desire for worldbuilding than it does with challenging or rewarding the PCs/players.
 

Besides, for in-game verisimilitude, sometimes little treasures are dropped and lost by people, and found by others.

Precioussss...

In 4th edition, I'd set a perception DC to notice it's actually valuable. If somebody's passive gets it, they notice it. If nobody wants to make an active check, then they might miss it.
 

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