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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Edgar Ironpelt" data-source="post: 9683541" data-attributes="member: 32075">I'm satisfied with how I handle gems as a GM, harking back to this <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/how-do-you-handle-gems-as-a-gm.713369/" target="_blank">recent thread</a>. But I've been wrestling with handling jewelry and artworks and finding that a tougher problem. Issue the first is that the size varies much much more for jewelry than for gems: Gems are about the weight of a coin, give or take an order of magnitude. Wearable jewelry ranges from less than a coin in weight (small earrings) to multiple pounds. For artwork not intended to be worn, weights can go from a couple of ounces for a little statuette up to tens and hundreds and even thousands of pounds. Tons for really colossal pieces. Even if you limit things to 'lootable' art that doesn't require special measures to carry off, that still put the top in the tens of pounds (possibly a couple hundred pounds, depending on how tightly you define 'special measures to carry off').Issue the second is a need to figure both the material and the artistic values of the piece of jewelry or art. The material value - the value of the gems when pried off and the precious metals when melted down - is relatively simple. Figuring a 'reasonable' range for artistic values I'm finding to be more of a puzzle. So: Do you figure weights and values for jewelry and art pieces ad-hoc by hand-waving? Or do you have some sort of system? I'm interested in systems, particularly those that don't make a hash where the 'artistic' value is negative. I really want the minimum value to be the value of the gem and precious metal components. Thoughts?</blockquote>

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