D&D General Action Scene: The Treasure Vault of Maaht

[bpauls]

While 4e was not my favorite edition, it taught me some skills for designing dynamic combat scenarios that translate very well to other editions, including B/X.

I've put together what I think is a fun set-piece utilizing my design for the Conanesque constriction viper as a treasure-hoard guardian.

Please let me know if you see places where this could be improved. Thank you!

Action Scene: The Treasure Vault of Maaht

Beware the vigilance of Temut and Lotan!

bxbandits.substack.com

 

[aco175]

What edition is this for? What level PCs is this for? You have stirges and a giant snake with 38 HP, seems like 3rd level but I'm not sure. The 30,000gp scattered around seems like a lot for PCs of less than 15th level to me. The main problem is volume. You have 30,000 coins spread out in a 50x50 area and 35ft long snake swimming through them with just its nostrils sticking out. I'm not sure how deep the snake needs, but I think you need more coins to get to that. There are great math people on the boards that love this kind of problem.

Edit: I see that it is designed for D&D BX

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Maaht is hard.

 

[bpauls]

The main problem is volume. You have 30,000 coins spread out in a 50x50 area and 35ft long snake swimming through them with just its nostrils sticking out. I'm not sure how deep the snake needs, but I think you need more coins to get to that.

Edit: I see that it is designed for D&D BX

Thanks for the constructive feedback!

Yes, the volume issue bothered me as well, while I was putting this together. I was more focused on the tactics, so I didn't take time to crunch the numbers.

Moldvay's Basic Rules describe a standard coin as being about the size of a U.S. half-dollar, which takes up a volume of 0.000071 cubic feet when stacked next to identically sized coins. I am envisioning most of the treasure piled in a 5'x9' area, roughly in the center of the eastern part of the chamber (east of the crevice). If we assume an average depth of 3 feet, this is a volume of 135 cubic feet, or 1.9 million coins, evenly stacked.

To get to this number of physical coins, while preserving the total value of the hoard, I need to reduce the average value of each coin. Converting 65% of the hoard to copper pieces should do the trick, while leaving a few hundred thousand coins for spillover into other parts of the chamber. Then I can convert the rest to silver and gold for variety. I'll need to adjust the flavor text regarding the high-priest's gold fetish, and to explain the presence of so much copper, but that is easy enough to do.

If we assume the coins are piled unevenly, this should allow Lotan to burrow into a particularly large pile for his "sauna", while the characters walk amongst the various piles on a more shallow layer of coins covering the entire floor.

Does that sound more reasonable?

Thanks for pushing back on this.

 

[bpauls]

What level PCs is this for? You have stirges and a giant snake with 38 HP, seems like 3rd level but I'm not sure. The 30,000gp scattered around seems like a lot for PCs of less than 15th level to me.

My thoughts are this is a scenario for 6-8 PCs of levels 6-8. The average XP needed for one of the four standard human classes to advance from level 7 to level 8 in BX is 57,600. If we assume seven PCs survive the fight, they would each earn 4614 XP from the value of the hoard (as long as they can actually transport it back to a safe location.) This is approximately 8% of what they need to advance to the next level, so I don't feel it's excessive.