Killed a dragon, now they wanna strip it

[eamon]

I've seen a few responses here suggesting that it's OK to hand it out as treasure as long as you balance that by removing equivalent treasure parcels elsewhere. That's an admirable level of attention to the details keeping a campaign from going haywire, but...

• Players will sniff this out. You'd like to avoid turning the game into a zero sum game, so, from that point of view, when the players actually get a good idea (or conversely, screw up and need to run, say) you really want them to suffer the consequences. It's more fun in the long run.
• Now, if you just want to keep balance, mneme idea of a skill challenge or other mini quest is brilliant. See, it's OK if you hand out too much treasure so long as you also hand that out in XP - the game just progresses as if any other encounter had taken place; no sweat - and the players feel even more rewarded, they get XP and gold!
• You don't actually need to keep balance. I think the best campaign I ever ran was one where I placed and quantified the amount of treasure before each session. The players walked into loot almost worth that of an entire level once; they missed an even bigger pile another time. They notice, and they start thinking craftily... The trick is, and this works particularly well in 4e, treasure value scales enormously as levels rise - character wealth goes up 40% each level.
  
  So, if you don't hand out 40% one particular level, but an absurd 200% (5 times too much) - well, now they have about twice as much as they should. That's not even a +1 bonus higher than usual for some perspective - the game won't break down. 4e extremely resilient like that. And even if you don't reduce future treasure, they may have 2 times too much now, but over the course of 5 levels it's just 20% more than usual, and 5 more levels, it's 4%.
  
  Now, you'd be slightly crazy to hand out loot worth twice everything the PC's have - but the point is that the game won't break down, even in that extreme example. So don't be afraid to skip over-precise accounting; keep an eye on the overall ballpark current wealth and don't sweat the details. Let the players notice that the fate of the heroes is in their hand. And once they've figured that out, you can take the kiddie gloves off .
• Another sneaky trick you can use to work around handing out loot that's "too powerful" is to make it powerful in the current situation (say, resist cold whilst in icy northern climes) but less useful down the road when the campaign takes them to a different area. When they choose to sell, they only get a fraction of the worth of the item, and not selling leaves them with a fairly useless item - which basically means the item turns into a plot device for a limited time - as was intended.

So, don't be too worried about balance, there are a bunch of mitigating factors: the system can take quite a beating without breaking down; any wealth imbalances quickly fix themselves due the heroic levels of inflation in D&D; with some planning you can limit the usefulness of items to a given story arc without being too obvious; and you can fix the imbalance by handing out extra XP too (for some other cool stunt the PC's pull).

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Good advice eamon... the trick is just not to worry about balance.

 

[Saeviomagy]

step 1. Take some property of the creature (ie - red dragon does... fiery stuff)

step 2. Find a magic item or magic items that provide something similar (fire resistant armor, fireburst robes, a fiery weapon etc)

step 3. Choose an amount of GP that you want the part to be worth. For most non-human creatures, choose the entire amount of treasure that the monster was going to drop in GP.

step 4. Give the PCs that amount of GP of components for enchant magic item (or alternately, allow them to use the martial practise that's similar, but to produce more than just +X items), but only allow them to be used to create the group of items from step 2.

step 5. Describe in a grizzly way how the ingredient is harvested.

Et voila! No more giant rats carrying gold pieces. Instead you must remove 15 giant rat spleens, tan them and stitch them together to produce a cloak of stealth!

 

[Jhaelen]

[*]Players will sniff this out.

How?

 

[eamon]

On my statement that player's will figure out that they'll get the same treasure no matter what they do in-game...

How?

Most player's I've played with have DM'd at one time or another - at least a one-shot. Others have read the DMG; they know the basics of how the game works and will perceive that the number of treasure parcels I'm handing out is precisely the DMG recommendation without even intending too. They'll notice the absence of "spikes" in the distribution as well. Wishlists make this particularly bad; people will expect to find at least something on their wishlist - that's kind-of the point. But that rubs their faces in the fact that they'll probably find stuff sometime in the future, and what they find is determined regardless of what they do (within reason, of course).

Also, it's just human nature; I try to keep a poker-face, but it's hard not to leak a little bit of information. If they make a terrible call - trusting the "human shopkeep" (aka changeling deviant) with that artifact for analysis, they might notice something's amiss, just as when they just walk past the huge secret cache of the duergar artificer. Or, they might learn of it later in-game. Metagaming in that kind of situation's obviously a no-no; but that doesn't mean the players are oblivious - just that they're not supposed to use out-of-game information to unreasonably help the in-game PC's.

Finally, it's just more exciting for me when I know that their choices actually will affect the characters - and excitement's infectious .

 

[eriktheguy]

You'd like to avoid turning the game into a zero sum game

+1 for game theory

 

[Jhaelen]

they know the basics of how the game works and will perceive that the number of treasure parcels I'm handing out is precisely the DMG recommendation without even intending too. They'll notice the absence of "spikes" in the distribution as well. Wishlists make this particularly bad; people will expect to find at least something on their wishlist - that's kind-of the point.

Well, I'm not handing out treasure parcels precisely as recommended, so it should be more difficult for my players to figure out.

And while I do encourage my players to come up with wish lists, I also don't give them exactly what they're wishing for. I only use them to get the gist of what kind of things they're interested in.

My players also seem to end up with slightly more treasure than they should have, because they're always looking for opportunities to do side-quests, which is something I like to reward.

So, I guess, I'm not really worried too much about balance, either

 

[Ryujin]

My general rule is that such things that are stripped from a carcass can only be raw materials, never providing the ultimately desired effect by themselves. You might be able to have a Masterwork dagger or shortsword made out of a dragon's tooth, in fact one of my characters sported just such a dagger for quite a while, but it would have to be worked as any other raw material would.

You might permit the materials to be used in order to produce something mundane, but useful. In 3e I had a character who was a fletcher/bowyer by profession and had huge numbers in Craft: Bowmaking. I wanted to make a masterwork strength bow for myself, but the DM ruled that I would need need special materials. Well all that meant was I started collecting every large bone that I could, to be slivered and layered in a composite bow, citing the fact that some of the best and most powerful bows ever made were crafted from layered wood and bone.

Dragon bits should rarely be much more than trophies.

 

[vagabundo]

4e is pretty easy to balance on the fly too - I wouldn't worry about going a few parcels over the loot guidelines.

I'm doing crazy stuff with my treasure loot and my game doesn't feel unbalanced.

I'd give them some big kudos for wanting to skin and reuse the dragon parts, but I'd also want some payback. Dragons are a prickly bunch about theimselves, even good aligned dragons will not be pleased to hear of the Head of One of their Own hanging in the Pig and Truffle. So I think a cult or flyby attack ambush may result if word get around about the newest/badest "Dragon Slayers" in town...

 

[Benlo]

This is what roleplaying *is*, though. Unless your brother has jars of organs in his room, he is pretending to be someone that would do such a thing. This may or may not be to your liking, but you can harness this creativity to make your game better and more fun.

Let them do it. Hide armor unenchanted is dirt cheap for anything but starting adventurers, residuum encourages ritual use, which is awesome, and plot hooks can be mined from this.

What if a cult of black dragonborn take offense at the armor made from the dragon's scales. Now they have a nemesis.

What if the gallbladder of a dragon has a property that causes a random effect when used in a ritual. What if their flaunting of the dragon's parts earns them fame as dragonslayers, and that draws the attention of powerful people in the area?

You can tie these into your current plans for adventure. Or not. It is up to you!

Jay

Oh, don't get me wrong, I was very happy they went that route. They RP a lot in D&D, and have their own set of morals. They hate to graverob, but a dead dragon or something is a veritable chop shop. The "tanner" reason I gave is because in, in part, I wanted to give them some boots or something made from them, and I didn't have the Adventurer's Vault with me, so I wanted to save it for a future play session. Only one of the characters has much use for Hide, so I'll give him some +1 Resist 5 Acid Hide, give the others some boots or maybe a cape, and perhaps give his Mount Ogre some barding.

("MOUNT OGRE?!" Well, we're going pretty homebrew, and he managed to best the ogre and kill its former master. I told him he can master the ogre, he just must remember to feed it and not mistreat it, and it'll be plenty loyal to him.)