Chunk of Meat

[Shin Okada]

I have heard that in South America Capybara is actually eaten, and Guinea pig is also eaten in Andean region. I may try them if I have a chance, perhaps. But no Dire Rat please.

 

[irdeggman]

with a name like Dire Rat you know it must be good. {Playoff of an an obscure Saturday Night Live commercial parady}

 

[Set]

with a name like Dire Rat you know it must be good. {Playoff of an an obscure Saturday Night Live commercial parady}

"With a name like 10,000 nuns and orphans, it's got to be good!"
"What's so bad about that?"
"They all got eaten by rats!"

Dire rat would probably be less likely to give you a disease than pork, come to think of it, but most villagers aren't going to accept that logic. Better to just make it into dried rations and save some money, if the party is that desperate for cash.

The best bet for selling the meat in town is to check out the owner of the local kennel or something similar. While most humans wouldn't touch it, it's possible a kennel owner would feed it to his dogs (assuming that he was convinced that the meat didn't harbor any diseases!).

 

[Starbuck_II]

"With a name like 10,000 nuns and orphans, it's got to be good!"
"What's so bad about that?"
"They all got eaten by rats!"

Dire rat would probably be less likely to give you a disease than pork, come to think of it, but most villagers aren't going to accept that logic. Better to just make it into dried rations and save some money, if the party is that desperate for cash.

The best bet for selling the meat in town is to check out the owner of the local kennel or something similar. While most humans wouldn't touch it, it's possible a kennel owner would feed it to his dogs (assuming that he was convinced that the meat didn't harbor any diseases!).

Can't you cast Remove Disease curing the whole meat of disease? (it cures a whole person after all)

One 3rd level spell and all. Most parties have Clerics.

 

[Christian]

In that character's situation, rat meat was the only mammal on the menu. In that type of situation, a ratburger beat tofu hands down IMHO. I'd eat a ratburger in that future myself, well done though..

Not to mention that the character hadn't eaten any meat in, like, thirty years.

I would concur with the general sentiment here--if they want to get any money for dire rats, they need live dire rats. They can be used as guard animals, breeding stock, etc. Dead dire rats have no value unless the community as a whole is desperately starving. (If only some of the community is starving, that subset has nothing of value to trade for them. If the whole community is starving, they may have cash to burn but no available sources of food, in which case those rat carcasses might start to look pretty good.)

 

[frankthedm]

Can't you cast Remove Disease curing the whole meat of disease? (it cures a whole person after all)

One 3rd level spell and all. Most parties have Clerics.

Actually, I'd think the 0th level Purify food and drink spell ought to work. If the party is trying to sell ratmeat at 5th level, they are waaaay too poor.

 

[Corbert]

Personally I'd like to hear from the OP why his PCs are trying to sell dire rat meat. There's been a lot of speculation, but no definite answer.

 

[frankthedm]

Personally I'd like to hear from the OP why his PCs are trying to sell dire rat meat. There's been a lot of speculation, but no definite answer.

OP just said "Here's the situation." that means it might just be a hypothetical example.

Enough on the rats, the OP also asked

And in general, when adventurers kill wild game do they have any special value?

Yeah. If they take decent care of a palatable animal, 1 to 3 silver a pound sounds good.

magnumguide.com

A bull moose can yield upwards of 800lbs of meat and a caribou 200lbs of meat. A wet brown bear hide can weigh up to 150lbs.

Using RL examples it sounds like a male Moose has over 50% meat to weight ratio, while the caribou has about a 30% meat to weight ratio.

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Food-Science-1425/cow-weight-cow-meat.htm?zIr=5

Cow, for another example seems to have a 33% meat to weight ratio after the major bone and fat is removed.

 

[Vegepygmy]

OP just said "Here's the situation." that means it might just be a hypothetical example.

It's not. I'll shed some light:

The PCs (five 1st-levels) have plenty of cash on hand--about 160 gp total. They have had only two combat encounters so far; in the first, they got some money off the corpses, the second was the dire rats.

As for why the player is trying to sell rat-meat, here is the original e-mail exchange between him and the DM:

Player: I'd like to know if there's a healer in town and how much he would charge to heal Harada and Mugsby. Without magical help it's going to take us six days of full bed rest to completely recover by RAW. Mugsby might get a little angry at the lack of companionship in a week's time, but he would tolerate that much downtime...

DM: Andy's character has some information about the availability of magical healing in town. I don't want to say any more about that at this time, because it is in-game knowledge that Mugsby doesn't have.

Player: Rigsby might also be able to use craft trapmaking to earn some money and Mugsby could try to use survival to earn some cash. A half a pound of meat is worth 3 silver pieces, which on average is about what Mugsby would be able to round up every day by taking 10 on Survival (13 total), or about 2 gp a week. Also, how much did the rats weigh? Could we sell them for about 5 copper per pound?

DM: No one wants to buy your disgusting rat-meat, barbarian! And I don't want to expand the Survival skill's usefulness into making money, but an untrained craftsperson can earn 1 sp/day. Also, Mugsby could try picking a pocket or two (risky, though!) with his Sleight of Hand skill. Rigsby (and any other trained craftsmen) can earn half his Craft check result in gp per week, on a day-to-day basis if he wants.

Player: Oh come on, a couple of silver per day for selling meat, which has a RAW value? Unbalanced?

And those rats should be worth something! There's no chicken in every pot around Oakhurst is there? I thought 5 copper per pound was undercutting RAW honestly. Small creatures are about 25 pounds and you figure there's some fur and leather in there. They should be worth at least 3 gold and 75 silvers. Those things are dangerous, and I doubt people walk into town with them everyday. They're rodents of UNUSUAL size! And they come from [the legendary dungeon-site]!

Be a yes DM, not a no DM, please?

It should also be mentioned that Mugsby is a barbarian from a far-off land where rats might be considered perfectly normal food.

 

[irdeggman]

The meat in question from the RAW is edible and prepared for eating - it is located under that area of the equipment section afterall.

What skill would you use to ensure that you have gotten salvagible meat and skin from a dead animal?

That is the one to use.

The meat must be prepared for consumption in order to fetch that price.

In general a profession check is what you would use. Profession (hunter) is the most likely one to use IMO in this case.


The other listed profession skills rely on having raw materials present to "process".

The underlying need is for the party to have a means of healing after combat. Because they have no clerics (or equivalent) in their midst puts more impetus on the DM to arrange for something - that is unless he wishes for situations like the one being talked about to become the norm.

Idle adventurers are the Devil's handiwork.