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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4954635" data-attributes="member: 4937">Pillaging corpses for alchemical ingredients is a time honored D&D tradition as well as a common trope of fantasy literature.I think you have to be careful of several things:1) Don't make every monster a walking potion.  It's not so bad if the guy with some alchemy skill, a few herbs, and the brew potion feat can turn every corpse into a potion (in fact, that's kinda cool IMO), but if you don't need any skill to do it and the effects go beyond those of ordinary potions things can get out of hand in a hurry.2) Don't leave the value of a corpse undefined and vague.  Understand that if corpses become treasure, you need some idea of what you are actually handing out or else its quickly going to invalidate assumptions about PC wealth.  For my part, I'd be more interested in a table that simply said, "Choice alchemical body parts and regeants, weight and value" and listed that for each relevant monster, so that I'd know that X lbs. of Manticore body parts was worth Y g.p.  After that, a list of which potions corresponded to which monster body parts would be hand, that is just what can you make out of this stuff if you find yourself wanting to make a potion on the cheap.3) Don't forget just how many monsters are out there.  Don't make body part collection so important to the game that everyone is hauling around a couple hundred pounds of dissected corpses and embalming equipment.  The system is supposed to be fun, and not a burden.4) The general idea of a curse (or possibly positive effect) resulting from the death of a monster is a good one, but if you aren't careful its going to be a very unfun one.  If every time you kill a monster, it results in a powerful curse, its just going to feel like the DM screwing the players after a while.  In D&D, I think you have to make some distinction between 'ordinary' monsters, and 'monsters of Legend'.  It's really those 'monsters of Legend', the ones that you've taken the trouble to name, give some history to, and perhaps even give a personality to that ought to be numinous, mysterious, and for which the PC's will accept that the death of the monster of legend is an epic event.  The death of some lesser monster need not be accompanied by any great fanfare.</blockquote>

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