D&D 5E Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh - worthless gold?

[uzirath]

I ran "Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh" from Ghosts of Saltmarsh this weekend. My players and I loved it. (It was one of my favorites when it was first published.) Don't read ahead if you don't want to know about a particular treasure, though I'm not giving anything away other than to describe it.

Spoiler

While browsing ahead I was struck by the solid gold apple that is valued at 5 gp. Say what? My back of the envelope calculations suggest that a small apple would require about six pounds of gold. Wouldn't that be around 300 gp for materials alone? The values of it and the other objects in that locations seemed bizarrely low. I'd imagine that a skillfully carved wooden apple might be worth 5 gp!

 

[billd91]

Maybe it's small?

 

[pukunui]

I suspect the WotC designers simply have a habit of undervaluing gold. For instance, in Tomb of Annihilation, it's possible to find a nugget of gold "the size of a dwarf's fist" that is somehow only worth 50 gp.

 

[Khelon Testudo]

Well, the apple doesn't have to be pure gold. Maybe even gold-plated? However nuggets are natural gold, which tends to be at least 85% pure, so I can't explain that one. A dwarf with a very small fist?!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm trying to remember if that was in the original. I have an inkling it was. I would probably make it 50gp, and assume it is small and of poor craftsmanship. 500gp would probably be a bit generous for a 1st level adventure, but would be more realistic.

Of course "gold" could just be a colour, rather than material...

 

[Nikosandros]

I'm trying to remember if that was in the original. I have an inkling it was. I would probably make it 50gp, and assume it is small and of poor craftsmanship. 500gp would probably be a bit generous for a 1st level adventure, but would be more realistic.

Of course "gold" could just be a colour, rather than material...

In the original, the apple is worth 150 gp. I've recently ran the updated version from GoS, but the characters didn't explore that room.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In the original, the apple is worth 150 gp. I've recently ran the updated version from GoS, but the characters didn't explore that room.

Looks like a typo to me then. 150 gp sounds fine.

 

[Nikosandros]

Looks like a typo to me then. 150 gp sounds fine.

I don't think it's a typo. The value of all the objects has been greatly reduced:

skull from 750 to 20;
apple from 150 to 5;
rose from 150 to 5;
discs from 50 to 5.

 

[uzirath]

Well, the apple doesn't have to be pure gold. Maybe even gold-plated?

In this case, the adventure specifies that they are indeed made from "pure gold." Of course, they could be hollow, but the schtick here is that the alchemist was trying to deceive people into believing that he was able to convert solid objects into pure gold. So a hollow apple doesn't make much sense.

 

[Celebrim]

At the time the adventure was made the silver piece was probably considered the basis of the economy, and a gold piece would have been worth 20 silver. It would appear when the adventure was adapted, the economic assumptions of the original author weren't adapted to the gold piece standard of the modern game. I would have multiplied any treasure by a factor of about 20 to represent it's intended worth in the modern game, so the 5 g.p. apple should be worth about 100 g.p.

The author of the original might have also been imagining a bauble about the size of 5 gold coins stacked together. You might even be able to justify that as medieval apples tended to either be quite small, or if large to have fiberous ridges in them ("costards").