I'm using the loot table for Lost Mine of Phandelver, and i forget which creature was missing.... maybe the Ogre... I used the Monster Manual loot table she has instead and i commented such on DMGuild, and THAT NIGHT there was an updated PDF for LMoP!
I wrote this series! It's wild that this compendium that started as a tool for my home games has become so popular and well-liked. I hope it can inspire some other tables to make monster entrails into fashion accessories. Thank you Bob for featuring it on your channel, it truly means the world to me. -Anne (fellow world builder)
Just downloaded the basic bundle to use in the game I run for my children and their friends - they are going to love it. I'm particularly looking forward when they fail arcana checks and I can lie about the effects of eating bits of monsters!
I've been prepping for a campaign for a while now in a nation I've created called Montiela, but in that nation there are these really cool primal esoterica esque hunters called Skinners that brave the ashen storms to bring back the monsters lurking in the tempest so they can sell the pieces to the wealthy. I had this idea in mind for a while, and this book will save my fucking life. I'm buying it soon and can't wait to put it to use, cuz scavenging monsters is a big part of this world.
I'm not surprised it's so popular. This is something the game's been needing for a long time. It looks very well thought out and you clearly put a lot of work into it. Congrats on your success.
I made a custom high power campaign for my players that was just like Shadow of the Colossus: a post-apoc fantasy setting where their goals were to hunt like 7 or 8 gargantuan or colossal beasts and harvest special parts from them to construct a device that would save the world. Also, the only loot they got was what they were able to harvest from their targets, with specific options on what they could turn it into. It was some of the most fun I've ever had.
With my newer group of players, there’s a fine line between telling them they can do anything in this game and giving them ideas about monster loot. I give it two sessions before that entire goblin family’s skin becomes matching fedoras for the party.
It all depends on your world and your preferences. In some games, goblins are people, in others they are truly monsters! This assumes you're using the Forgotten Realms interpretation of goblins
...and that is the Moment I let them have "Goblin Grease" for that Hats that grants +1 and a Letter: "Dear [Char], it fills my Heart with delight to see you wearing this Fedora. It perfectly resembles yours and my Ideals and outlook on the World and our Opinion how to interact with it. Every breath you take and every move you make; every bond you break and every step you take, I shall be watching over you." thoose "benefits go on and on and the additions get further on: Every single day And every word you say Every game you play Every night you stay I'll be watching you Every move you make And every vow you break Every smile you fake Every claim you stake I'll be watching you ...until the Reveal comes that a evil God has claimed their Soul with an addition of a former good God of theirs: Oh, can't you see You belong to me? ///// How my poor heart aches With every step you take?
I made a Google doc like this a few years ago. An easy way to do it on the fly is to award: - poison ingredients - potion ingredients - magic item components - body parts that acts like weapons - spell components that add a metamagic twist to a spell - items that act like spell scrolls or charged items It's also fun to give them the weapons wielded by Large creatures, which can be wielded with disadvantage one-handed but deal more damage than normal. And any magical effects can wear off over time if they're too powerful.
Gygax's written modules frequently included treasure in the monster's ailimentary canals. It would make sense that monsters might eat their foes whole and magic items, gold, and such may as yet still be undigested.
Tools like this are pretty useful, I would still encourage DMs to use their imagination (as always) but it's good to have a resource to help prompt you when your mind goes blank. My first ever campaign we were up against a Basilisk, it turned one of our party to stone. After defeating it we decided that the Basilisk's stomach must have some acid inside that dissolved the stone so it could eat it's prey. After a confused "I guess" shrug from our DM who was still in the "this book must tell me all!" Early stages of DMing, we cut out the stomach and coated our friend in the pretty corrosive stomach acid and freed them...and then dunked them in a lake to get that acid off.
A party member of mine noticed that things that it looks at turn to stone, when facing a basilisk. They promptly killed it and tore out its eyes which they put on a shield. BOOM: Shield of Petrification!
or to keep it consistent. our GM can go one time we killed a huge wolf an actual boss said to be at least 5 times larger then a regular wold (I rolled good on the harvest roll and had the gear) and all we got was 5 leather and 10 meat. +1 intestine (meat + intestine= sausage). next session we killed 3 regular wolfs got 9 leather, 3 intestine and 15meat (same roll).
If you don’t want your players constantly asking what each creature drops, you can just automatically reveal it to players who have tool proficiencies based on what drops. So a smith would notice ingredients that could be made into weapons, leatherworkers would notice useful hides, and so on.
for me it feels like the monster manual for each monster should contain a loot list whit this item needs to be skinned (this is the roll and this is how much you will get on a success, on a crit success and on a fail and crit fail... last one is usally almost everything was renders useless).
Wonderful video (as always). I just have to share, the add placement could not have been better. I was listening and I hear Bob say "hags... you can harvest their hands, their tongue" and suddenly, a hello fresh add comes on and says, with very zen music "dinner." It was priceless 🤣🤣🤣
Bob, thank you so much for this. You sold me on the DM's Guild, which I just signed up for after watching your video. You also sold me on this product, which I proceeded to buy... all of them. What a great addition to have. Thanks again Bob.
A fun one I did was when they killed a mimic, the cook of the party took the tongue, and I said if prepared properly, it could be consumed and place the consumer under the effects of the Disguise Self spell for 1 hour.
the flaw I see in the tarrasque is that should ANY of the tarrasque remain, it will start regenerating into the new tarrasque, so the longer you keep it, the more of the creature you will have reforming (though I do not recall reading anything about how long this regeneration takes.) small flaws aside, this is looking like a very cool supplement. having often played magic users since the mid to late 80s, I have often had to remind DMs that "I WANT MY SPELL COMPONENTS!!!" :) Not to mention harassing my DMs about wanting dragon scales ever since the first time I saw Dragon Slayer and the dragon scale shield came into being. (dragon scale armor became a thing well before we found any rules on it.)
@@BobWorldBuilder well ye know... I have a feast planned for next year, and that would stretch the budget... I was picturing more like the skull forming around that jar of brain bits, but you do bring up a positive aspect of the situation... :) I wonder if I can find any old French recipes for braised tarrasque :)
Hey Bob, I'm running Icewind Dale for my little cousins right now and I'm loving your series on the module. Your cadence and timing is very unique and makes it very easy to understand what you're explaining (must've picked that up working with kids) so from one bob DM to another, just wanted to say thanks
@@BobWorldBuilder my dm had sort of already been using a homebrew system like this. For example my lizardfolk player created a shield from a shambling mound that gave the user resistance to lightning damage
@@BobWorldBuilder - If they’re going to do artificers right in the next version, we’re going to need a much better crafting system, and that means putting prices on magic items. I know they want to claim magic items are too rare to put prices on, but that’s a worldbuilding decision that should be left up to DMs.
It’s funny, I introduced my dm and the table to this series last weekend, your timing is crazy! Great product and I feel like this should be a staple for looting and crafting.
As DM, I personally prefer Hamund's Harvesting Handbook. I tried to use it, but the players never remembered taking the loot from the monsters. The most interesting system I started to invent, but also could not test much, used tags on the collected items and from the combination of these tags emerged the effects. For example, certain plant had the regeneration tag, a monster gland could have the poison tag and so on.
Good also to consider the social implications of some of this stuff, wearing red dragon armor is very impressive! Wearing gold dragon armor means you probably murdered a good-aligned gold dragon! Some NPCs may not appreciate that
@@BobWorldBuilder In fact...that's actually covered in another game. In the game "Earthdawn", there's an armor called Obsidiman Skin, where Obsidiman is one of the races in the game. While the rock-like skin of the Obsidiman makes for good armor, let's just say it probably won't make you look like a good guy in the eyes of some people...ESPECIALLY not the Obsidiman.
Our party took down an adult white dragon after a tough fight a few weeks back, and now our NPC fighter wears white dragonscale armor and our ranger wears light dragonhide. So, now there's this ancient white flying around, and we're hiding like ankhegs to try to avoid explaining to it why we're wearing its cousin. 🙂
Few know that the glands in a wolf's stomach accumulate elemental metal from their nutrition and form them into coin shaped nuggets. That's the original source of those trading units.
Yup, the artificer beast master salvaged the power core from the chardalyn dragon and we came up with a way for him to imbue it into his steel defender, giving it a minor breath weapon with a chance of catastrophic backfire 😈
Assassin Games: A Collection of Poison's is a great reference book for 5E assassin's. When I come across a plant/creature that I can collect/harvest from; I've asked my DM. Cool concept. I also have a long time character that harvested Ankheg scales and forged armor out of them.
The gold coins on (I would suggest in) the dead wolf is because they eat people. I don't think they would accidentally swallow a fork, but a couple gold coins or the occasional gem is possible. Larger monsters that can swallow humans whole could (and should) have just about anything in their gullet. The question to ask is: has what they swallowed been damaged since it was eaten? Metal and other minerals could be ok inside a regular digestive tract, but something that has a gizzard (grinding organ used by birds and many invertebrates etc) would probably tear up anything, over time.
So I saw your last video (I think it was the One DnD thing with the Bard, Ranger etc.) yesterday and you mentioned this supplement in an ad kind-of-thing and you got me hooked right there and then. So i skedaddled over to the DMs Guild and got me the PDF for Dragon of Icespire Peak, which I intend to run as a first time DM (no worries I already played some DnD as a player so I kinda know what I'm doing...or maybe not, who knows). Anyway, quite funny that you made a video about those supplements for a mechanic that I am really missing in the game
I've used harvesting and monster looting for potion components, but the addition of crafting magical amor, weapons, and other items is a really nice idea. Also the raw components having magical effects are a great feature too (like the banshee dust and ectoplasma example). I think I'll be incorporating several of these ideas into my campaign. Thank you Bob for sharing and the discount code!
I've tried to do loot in my games, but it's always ended up being "get everything" or needlessly complicated. This ruleset is stupidly simple. 10+CR DC is genius. And the idea of broken pieces requiring slightly more gold to craft than in tact... Chefs kiss.
Aw yeah, Anne Gregersen! I haven't read the Monster Loot books yet but I use her Bloodied & Bruised supplements all the time to make my combats more interesting. Maybe now's the time to take a look at those Loot titles and throw Bob some affiliate credits.
My buddies and I kind of have a hub town that’s been getting upgraded throughout the campaign, and with it we are upgrading store buildings as well. Our blacksmith forge got upgraded by installing a hydra heart into the pump. A good amount of suspended belief, but it’s been really fun looking at the worlds loot and material and seeing what might stick as an upgrade material for our hub town.
Damn. I'm running Out of the Abyss campaign for nine months and I wish I had this book in the beginning. We have an artificer who started to craft tons of stuff in downtime and other characters who usually help him to do it. There were hundreds of dead derro, undead, gnolls, miconids and demons apart from many beasts from Underdark. Now I remember every monster and wonder what practical things could be found apart from some flesh and skin to rot or be eaten
Mimic rations are the best rations, because they mimic what ever you want to eat, like that fine lobster dinner, or that pizza topped to your preference, or those $300 ice-cream with gold in it, etc etc.
I remember I had a 3.5 ranger who LOVED to skin EVERYTHING. He had a side business making leather goods for sale, selling to all the places we traveled to. I do remember grossing out my party tho when I harvested a few troglodytes, and lizardfolk we dispatched. They had no issues with things that they couldn't possibly talk to, being crafting mats. I argued that since the pieces were already made to fit a humanoid form, that it would make it take less time/scrap. Mind you that this is also the same party that had ZERO ISSUE with "sending my character on a long sea voyage" which is code for my elf wizard was murdered for his bones...... We were playing in a Paladium RPG. Elf bones are a good selling material per ounce, and so my GM used medical stats and a lot of math to figure out my skeletal weight. Then dropped a haul of gold on the party, and I had to roll a new character :( who didn't even get a share of the gold, just some starting gear..... 30 years later, still a 'lil salty about that. Morel of the story is, never play a character that is worth more dead than alive.
My players will have to use this in my upcoming GrimDark Sun campaign. They will have to scrounge for everything including water. There are no Iron age weapons so whey will need to hunt dangerous creatures of Athas to "progress". This video gives me a lot of inspiration!
This looks like a more refined version of something my Wife and I use when dm'ing that we found on gmbinder. It's super fun and gives the ability for that random monster encounter to be more than a minor time sink for higher level characters
I would limit the ability to loot to those proficient in the medicine skill or maybe the nature skull for the actual harvesting of monster bits. I can tell you from experience that if you introduce this mechanic into your game, it will BECOME like a quarter of your entire game time.
This is awesome. I think another great thing you can do with some of this stuff is give these looted items to your NPC and enemies. Why wouldn't they be looting things as well? Really creative magical items with unpredictable effects.
My party used the head of a blue dragon as a home defense system. We hung it up on the wall like a trophy and set it up to shoot it’s breath weapon if anybody uninvited came in.
The table I play and DM created similar tables for crafting by harvesting different things from magical creatures. I’m my home brew I have an NPC that specializes in obtaining those types of things. I was running a low level campaign for the table and had a grand plan……. The campaign went off the rails when the PCs met the NPC. They now work for him searching for wondrous items and hard to find spell components. One of my favorite sessions was when they were searching for gold dragon scales for an artificer who was commissioned to make a suit of dragon scale armor. They didn’t fight the dragon, the fighter and the dragon played dragon chess while the bard told stories and the rest of the party collected shed dragon scales. It was awesome.
bought the book already after last video. awesome! Btw: regarding skyrim, there are tons of mods to "fix" looting to be more realistic, but I bet mr Bob already knows that. anyway, thanks for pointing out this book, it is really cool stuff👍🏻
One of my players decided he'd skin a Gorgon (the bull not Medusa) for armour. He had lost his equipment earlier due to a draw from the Deck of Many Things. I had to improvise of course. But it worked well enough.
@@BobWorldBuilder Thank you. After many, many years of avoiding the Deck, I've now used it four or five times in different campaigns and it only fizzled out once. Never "broke" the game, although it did cause a retcon of the main arc of a campaign.
@@southron_d1349 Oh no. Now I´m actually tempted again to use it in my own campaign. It wouldn´t even fall out of the themes or story of it... Though: Any major tip from these experiences of yours?
@@tjajaja When the Deck appears, I make it clear that 1) No one is obligated to draw and aren't being spoilsports if they don't want to and 2) they may choose to draw up to three cards. Unless a card compels them to draw another, of course. Last, until a player has drawn all their cards, no one else can. This means it's possible for two players to draw the Moon and have d3 Wishes each. In case someone draws the Key or the Sun, make sure you have assigned magical items to each PC ahead of time - or at least a list of possibilities. After all those who wished to draw are done, the Deck vanishes. No fobbing it off to an enemy nor keeping it for later. The Donjon and the Knight appeared three times. While one of the Donjon draws helped bring a fun conclusion to a short campaign, both it and the Knight were a bit of a nuisance by popping up so much. I replaced the Knight with the Hierophant (receive a free feat), the Donjon was replaced with the Wheel (your ancestry changes according to a roll on the Reincarnation table), and the Basilisk - which results in immediate petrification with no save - replaced the Void. One problem did crop up. A PC drew the Balance and was changed to an Evil alignment. Another player meta-gamed and decided he didn't like that PC anymore. He couldn't be persuaded his character could have no knowledge of the change. There's always one! Fortunately, the campaign ended a couple of sessions later so it wasn't too bad. Hope this helps you.
Troll's blood is more than a mere potion of healing. It heals you each round for a minute. So it's more like a potion of regeneration, which is actually another effect you could give it, maybe with additional preparation. The possibilities are wonderfully limitless and this is such a useful system. This is the kind of stuff that should already be in the rules.
While I know it would only complicate things, after hearing about how looting slows gameplay down, slime outbreaks (or any other decomposing monster), adventurers getting fined if they didn't process the bodies correctly, or even them later hearing of an outpost/settlement being duressed from an onslaught from the outbreak
Heliana's Guide to Monster Hunting is another really great resource along these same lines. I've been introducing monster harvesting and crafting in my game and I think it's going really well!
In the first Savage Worlds game in which I played, we started out with a single weapon and a suit of clothing. We had no armor. Our first big fight was against a bunch of degenerate serpent men. Throughout the fight, the GM emphasized how tough their hides were - part of helping us learn the system of having to deal enough damage to exceed their toughness. After the fight, my character, who had the Survival skill, skinned them all and took the hides to a leather worker to get the party leather armor. The GM never let me forget that I skinned sentient (just barely) creatures.
This reminds me of my old character I had. They were a guild Artisan blacksmith / armorer. They made weapons and armor out of monster parts. Mostly out of necessity because they were not rich enough for regular materials. And also they eat monsters because again they were poor. As a result they had an array of resistances from electricity all the way to poison.
Had a player who wanted to speak to a skeleton he met, which was obviously not able to speak. so he built it a faux lung made of leather and a tiny piston that inflates and deflates it, and vocal chords made out of pig skins. i am not sure if this is something i should have allowed but it was a great rp moment and it was fun creating a NPC together, which is definetly one of my favourites.
I'm interested to see how these would play out alongside an equipment durability system, so say your armor broke after a fight but you can haul a spider hide back to camp and restock.
I forst used Hammund for loot and crafting in our Icewind Dale campaign. However I always ended up a bit stumped when the party encountered monsters i troduced in Icewind dale or beasts and humanoids since those were ofte. Not covered or very little. Recently found the Monster LOOT, and it is so amazingly organized. And it covers every single unique creature and even important people in Icewind dale. And it feels a little more lightweight and easier to to use. Deffi etly a recoendation.
Thanks! I always had a bad time with loot, it was something thar I've never known how to do in my campaigns and almost everytime my players wanted to loot the bosses and minor creatures, but I never knew exactly how to do that. It's a great way to help DMs!
These books would be awesome for my Bard/Rogue character who used her share of the party's first real quest reward gold to hire thugs and start her own thieve's guild. They steal from Waterdeep and sell in Skullport. After hiring a few more later on, she split the guild in half. Half steal from Waterdeep to sell in Skullport, the other half trails the party to scavenge any loot they left behind, at which point they take back to their shop in Skullport run by a recruited, named NPC (Marta Moonshadow for anyone playing Mad Mage); whom we give gold to stock ingredients and other necessary adventuring gear (rations, torches, shovels, picks, etc etc), as part of her salary we give her any scrolls we find for her to add to her spellbook, and to enchant finer loot we find, such as jeweled crowns, exquisite rings, etc. I'm a long time player of video games, especially RPGs and Action-Adventure titles; so looting ingredients for crafting has always been a fun aspect for me. I absolutely love this idea of finding rare ingredients for magical gear enchanting, hauling them to town for a crafter to make. Just a bonus my character owns the shop where these are made in our campaigns main hub. >:) (This is also why everyone in my party has about 8000 gold each, but my Rogue/Bard has 17,000. She reinvests a lot, and rarely leaves anything behind. And for anyone concerned about greed, my rogue/bard is a Yuan-Ti from Chult whose just exploring other cultures, and gold has little meaning to her. She's the group's most trustworthy treasurer besides the cleric.)
For monsters like elementals, because I usually describe them vanishing into thin air when they die, I would have the player roll a sleight of hand check mid-combat, for if they want to keep something from the elemental, they have to steal it when it's alive, as part of a physical attack. Kinda like Rikku in FFX. Also, I think giants' fingernails are used for potions of giant strength. I guess toenails work just as well, which would explain why they're a cool and valuable loot ^^ I don't know if the author compiled the list of ingredients for spells and potions, if so, what an achievement since it's not the most fascinating read!
You promised You delivered Yes, yes, and yes It is surprising that Wizards have not integrated a similar system natively into D&D Bravo, thanks for the review. It will make many players happy
Should you have the players auto loot for expediency though ? It might be boring for all players to wait for one player to loot at every single corpse they encounter
Do this all the Time - mostly, when the GM allows such for RP and as GM when Players roleplay around this and not just "grab additional loot". Dragon Blood f.E. grants AC when rubbed on the Skin or similar Items - so it makes Leather better but is useless on Iron. It also can be used to create or up the Quality of Armor. The Scales and the Grease are for the Iron Tools like Weaponry or Plate for the same Stuff. The Harvesting Roll is always done with the Roll which helps to categorize and get insight into the Monsters Stats. And Yes, different Proficiencies can get different Stuff from the same monster for different Purposes. This Stuff is the "GP" the Players get from the Fight. My Players always get bareley enough to come by - they have to do such Stuff and trickery to make a profit. The "insanely high Quest Reward" for the BBEG? Well, they get little Quests where f.E. the Mage has been subject of a break-in and offers 50GP for solving the Case. Same goes for the next Tavern Owner and his Family Sword. And the next local Vendor who misses his magical Ring. They know someone collects thoose, but they do not know why and how. They do not know that this goes on for a long Time until they find out it is the BBEG and by defeating him they solve all the Cases at all - hundreds and hundreds of small Quests they can then cash in. Loot is important - and just rolling on a List and adding said Stuff to your List is boring. Give it meaning by having to sell it to specific Merchants or have it have a expiration date. Have it been part of the Chars most beloved Piece of Equipment that gets outdated and can be upgraded with this. F. E. have the Fairy Dust have be able to upgrade the Crystal of Rainbows (shoots a prismatic Ray) to the next DC or have it be a optional Component in "Fairy Spells" upping Save DC or such. Have it basically be a "Potion" or be part of a Potion. Something like this.
Hearing about all these different D&D modules always gives me something to think about design-wise while working on my own ttrpg. I'd like to try mimic rations. Maybe they turn into wooden/stone-looking meat.
I heard one bit of lore, saying that adding powdered brain of a greater yugoloth to the material components of mind-controlling spell has some chance to make said spell irresistible. That sounds like a fun (yet somewhat unbalanced) idea
Back in college we played a ranger who was all about making equipment out of slain enemies, especially dragons. It was fun and the DM gave us a lot of freedom to come up with creative new pseudo-magic items. It did make us realize how broken crafting was in D&D 3.5E though, especially when it comes to art items. A magic sword made of dragon bone that deals lightening damage = ~2 weeks down time. A non-magical wedding ring with an engraving of a dragon = over 70 years!?
I made a set of very dangerous magically charged giant beetle swarms (one for each flavor of magic), and added a bit of information about them, including suggestions on parts for harvesting and what to do with them, because it should be a thing. i got lucky and fount an artist who is also an entemologist to do the beetle art, so its about as accurate as giant fantasy beetles can be!
I'd totally use wolf skin for hoods and capes for arctic climate. Wolf fur doesn't really take on icing, so it's great in front of mouths of breathing humanoids. Of course, to know this, it would require either being a skilled artisan working in the climate or a survival check. And before you ask me: Yes, this is real and the polar explorers did exactly this.
8:55 yeah I'd have mods to the tip or shaft maybe increase damage but the feathers could ignore the close range limit or increase all the range in some way.
Oh seems like a fun supplement for my monster hunting campaign. We mainly use Helianas guide to monster hunting for the core of it with harvesting and crafting and the loot items showcased here would go together well with it. Maybe thats a supplement to look at if you want to make a 3d party deep dive video again.
For my game I think of starting weapons as weapons players can upgrade rather than trade out. To the handle, to the metal of the weapon, etc. Allowing my players to customize their weapons. So then when they loot a monster they think more critically about what materials they could maybe use to their weapons. Or what other party members might benefit from.
💥 Monster Loot (affiliate): www.dmsguild.com/product/275550?affiliate_id=1987166
✅ LIKE & SHARE: ua-cam.com/users/BobWorldBuildervideos
✅ PATREON: www.patreon.com/bobworldbuilder
150 gold for an extra 1d6 Lightning Damage seems like a steal!
Thank you!! I went and bought all of that instantly, geebus what a great resource!
@@Slit518 you have to kill a blue dragon wyrmling (risking a very angy parent), or buy the item, adding its final cost
I'm using the loot table for Lost Mine of Phandelver, and i forget which creature was missing.... maybe the Ogre... I used the Monster Manual loot table she has instead and i commented such on DMGuild, and THAT NIGHT there was an updated PDF for LMoP!
I wrote this series! It's wild that this compendium that started as a tool for my home games has become so popular and well-liked. I hope it can inspire some other tables to make monster entrails into fashion accessories. Thank you Bob for featuring it on your channel, it truly means the world to me.
-Anne (fellow world builder)
Just downloaded the basic bundle to use in the game I run for my children and their friends - they are going to love it. I'm particularly looking forward when they fail arcana checks and I can lie about the effects of eating bits of monsters!
I've been prepping for a campaign for a while now in a nation I've created called Montiela, but in that nation there are these really cool primal esoterica esque hunters called Skinners that brave the ashen storms to bring back the monsters lurking in the tempest so they can sell the pieces to the wealthy. I had this idea in mind for a while, and this book will save my fucking life. I'm buying it soon and can't wait to put it to use, cuz scavenging monsters is a big part of this world.
I'm not surprised it's so popular. This is something the game's been needing for a long time. It looks very well thought out and you clearly put a lot of work into it. Congrats on your success.
I love how clean the whole thing feels!
And you gave me an idea for a DMG thing, should I ever return to writing there...
I made a custom high power campaign for my players that was just like Shadow of the Colossus: a post-apoc fantasy setting where their goals were to hunt like 7 or 8 gargantuan or colossal beasts and harvest special parts from them to construct a device that would save the world. Also, the only loot they got was what they were able to harvest from their targets, with specific options on what they could turn it into. It was some of the most fun I've ever had.
With my newer group of players, there’s a fine line between telling them they can do anything in this game and giving them ideas about monster loot. I give it two sessions before that entire goblin family’s skin becomes matching fedoras for the party.
It all depends on your world and your preferences. In some games, goblins are people, in others they are truly monsters! This assumes you're using the Forgotten Realms interpretation of goblins
I feel you bro... Lol
...and that is the Moment I let them have "Goblin Grease" for that Hats that grants +1 and a Letter:
"Dear [Char],
it fills my Heart with delight to see you wearing this Fedora. It perfectly resembles yours and my Ideals and outlook on the World and our Opinion how to interact with it.
Every breath you take and every move you make; every bond you break and every step you take, I shall be watching over you."
thoose "benefits go on and on and the additions get further on:
Every single day
And every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I'll be watching you
Every move you make
And every vow you break
Every smile you fake
Every claim you stake
I'll be watching you
...until the Reveal comes that a evil God has claimed their Soul with an addition of a former good God of theirs:
Oh, can't you see
You belong to me?
/////
How my poor heart aches
With every step you take?
I see your party plays Rimworld
@@BobWorldBuilder My Ed Gein inspired Barbarian "people can be hats too"
I made a Google doc like this a few years ago. An easy way to do it on the fly is to award:
- poison ingredients
- potion ingredients
- magic item components
- body parts that acts like weapons
- spell components that add a metamagic twist to a spell
- items that act like spell scrolls or charged items
It's also fun to give them the weapons wielded by Large creatures, which can be wielded with disadvantage one-handed but deal more damage than normal. And any magical effects can wear off over time if they're too powerful.
Gygax's written modules frequently included treasure in the monster's ailimentary canals. It would make sense that monsters might eat their foes whole and magic items, gold, and such may as yet still be undigested.
Yeah it’s definitely something I want to do more often with predators!
Tools like this are pretty useful, I would still encourage DMs to use their imagination (as always) but it's good to have a resource to help prompt you when your mind goes blank.
My first ever campaign we were up against a Basilisk, it turned one of our party to stone. After defeating it we decided that the Basilisk's stomach must have some acid inside that dissolved the stone so it could eat it's prey. After a confused "I guess" shrug from our DM who was still in the "this book must tell me all!" Early stages of DMing, we cut out the stomach and coated our friend in the pretty corrosive stomach acid and freed them...and then dunked them in a lake to get that acid off.
That's a great, memorable moment! xD
A party member of mine noticed that things that it looks at turn to stone, when facing a basilisk. They promptly killed it and tore out its eyes which they put on a shield. BOOM: Shield of Petrification!
or to keep it consistent.
our GM can go one time we killed a huge wolf an actual boss said to be at least 5 times larger then a regular wold (I rolled good on the harvest roll and had the gear) and all we got was 5 leather and 10 meat. +1 intestine (meat + intestine= sausage).
next session we killed 3 regular wolfs got 9 leather, 3 intestine and 15meat (same roll).
If you don’t want your players constantly asking what each creature drops, you can just automatically reveal it to players who have tool proficiencies based on what drops. So a smith would notice ingredients that could be made into weapons, leatherworkers would notice useful hides, and so on.
That's a good idea!
for me it feels like the monster manual for each monster should contain a loot list whit this item needs to be skinned (this is the roll and this is how much you will get on a success, on a crit success and on a fail and crit fail... last one is usally almost everything was renders useless).
Wonderful video (as always).
I just have to share, the add placement could not have been better. I was listening and I hear Bob say "hags... you can harvest their hands, their tongue" and suddenly, a hello fresh add comes on and says, with very zen music "dinner." It was priceless 🤣🤣🤣
For fixing broken items I'd imagine you could use the Mending cantrip if your party has access to it.
Yeah I believe mending is for a single break/crack in something, so I'd probably allow it as multiple castings during a short rest
The Monster Loot books are definitely dope.
Wow it's great to see supplements like this in 5e. This style of creativity is everywhere in the OSR, so it's great to see this stuff here.
I run this in my campaign! Our local goblin dissects every monster the party kills!
Of course it's a fetching goblin XD
Haha that's awesome! :)
Bob, thank you so much for this. You sold me on the DM's Guild, which I just signed up for after watching your video. You also sold me on this product, which I proceeded to buy... all of them. What a great addition to have. Thanks again Bob.
Awesome! Glad you found this helpful!
@@BobWorldBuilder it`s Oct 12th and the 10% code does not work any more 😢
A fun one I did was when they killed a mimic, the cook of the party took the tongue, and I said if prepared properly, it could be consumed and place the consumer under the effects of the Disguise Self spell for 1 hour.
Thanks Bob -- just bought the 4 generic ones .. cheers
thanks for the code --
Great! Hope you like them as much as I do!
the flaw I see in the tarrasque is that should ANY of the tarrasque remain, it will start regenerating into the new tarrasque, so the longer you keep it, the more of the creature you will have reforming (though I do not recall reading anything about how long this regeneration takes.)
small flaws aside, this is looking like a very cool supplement. having often played magic users since the mid to late 80s, I have often had to remind DMs that "I WANT MY SPELL COMPONENTS!!!" :)
Not to mention harassing my DMs about wanting dragon scales ever since the first time I saw Dragon Slayer and the dragon scale shield came into being. (dragon scale armor became a thing well before we found any rules on it.)
Soooo infinite rations? Haha
@@BobWorldBuilder well ye know... I have a feast planned for next year, and that would stretch the budget... I was picturing more like the skull forming around that jar of brain bits, but you do bring up a positive aspect of the situation... :) I wonder if I can find any old French recipes for braised tarrasque :)
Hey Bob, I'm running Icewind Dale for my little cousins right now and I'm loving your series on the module. Your cadence and timing is very unique and makes it very easy to understand what you're explaining (must've picked that up working with kids) so from one bob DM to another, just wanted to say thanks
Thanks for the great suggestion! I just bought this for my DM
Hope you like it as much as I do!
@@BobWorldBuilder my dm had sort of already been using a homebrew system like this. For example my lizardfolk player created a shield from a shambling mound that gave the user resistance to lightning damage
Wow this is amazing. My party loves to loot/dissect creatures and I just kinda make it up but this will make it so much more exciting for them!
I've found it very fun and useful! Kinda wish it came in print!
@@BobWorldBuilder I sometimes end up getting these PDFs printed (for personal use only) and I have a feeling this may be one I need to do that for.
My players fought some harpies and manticores, so they collected feathers and spines, which the cleric/archer used to make some arrows of slaying.
Very nice!
@@BobWorldBuilder - If they’re going to do artificers right in the next version, we’re going to need a much better crafting system, and that means putting prices on magic items. I know they want to claim magic items are too rare to put prices on, but that’s a worldbuilding decision that should be left up to DMs.
It’s funny, I introduced my dm and the table to this series last weekend, your timing is crazy!
Great product and I feel like this should be a staple for looting and crafting.
As DM, I personally prefer Hamund's Harvesting Handbook. I tried to use it, but the players never remembered taking the loot from the monsters. The most interesting system I started to invent, but also could not test much, used tags on the collected items and from the combination of these tags emerged the effects. For example, certain plant had the regeneration tag, a monster gland could have the poison tag and so on.
boa, é bom fazer com as próprias mãos também
Good also to consider the social implications of some of this stuff, wearing red dragon armor is very impressive! Wearing gold dragon armor means you probably murdered a good-aligned gold dragon! Some NPCs may not appreciate that
That's another good reason they didn't include humanoid parts lol
@@BobWorldBuilder In fact...that's actually covered in another game. In the game "Earthdawn", there's an armor called Obsidiman Skin, where Obsidiman is one of the races in the game. While the rock-like skin of the Obsidiman makes for good armor, let's just say it probably won't make you look like a good guy in the eyes of some people...ESPECIALLY not the Obsidiman.
Our party took down an adult white dragon after a tough fight a few weeks back, and now our NPC fighter wears white dragonscale armor and our ranger wears light dragonhide.
So, now there's this ancient white flying around, and we're hiding like ankhegs to try to avoid explaining to it why we're wearing its cousin. 🙂
Few know that the glands in a wolf's stomach accumulate elemental metal from their nutrition and form them into coin shaped nuggets.
That's the original source of those trading units.
I use the one for Icewind Dale, it's been very good so far. And they often have to choose if they can afford to spend the time to harvest things.
Ahh yeah, Icewind Dale's environment creates a greater risk--and possibly greater reward for some of the items you can acquire this way!
Yup, the artificer beast master salvaged the power core from the chardalyn dragon and we came up with a way for him to imbue it into his steel defender, giving it a minor breath weapon with a chance of catastrophic backfire 😈
Assassin Games: A Collection of Poison's is a great reference book for 5E assassin's. When I come across a plant/creature that I can collect/harvest from; I've asked my DM. Cool concept. I also have a long time character that harvested Ankheg scales and forged armor out of them.
This was really helpful. Thanks I just bought the pdf!
Awesome! Glad you found this helpful!
I love this. And will be purchasing it post-haste!
The gold coins on (I would suggest in) the dead wolf is because they eat people. I don't think they would accidentally swallow a fork, but a couple gold coins or the occasional gem is possible. Larger monsters that can swallow humans whole could (and should) have just about anything in their gullet. The question to ask is: has what they swallowed been damaged since it was eaten? Metal and other minerals could be ok inside a regular digestive tract, but something that has a gizzard (grinding organ used by birds and many invertebrates etc) would probably tear up anything, over time.
I got these with your code because your last video. Can't wait so use it.
Awesome! I got a thank you from the writer after those sales, so I extend their thanks to you! :)
So I saw your last video (I think it was the One DnD thing with the Bard, Ranger etc.) yesterday and you mentioned this supplement in an ad kind-of-thing and you got me hooked right there and then. So i skedaddled over to the DMs Guild and got me the PDF for Dragon of Icespire Peak, which I intend to run as a first time DM (no worries I already played some DnD as a player so I kinda know what I'm doing...or maybe not, who knows). Anyway, quite funny that you made a video about those supplements for a mechanic that I am really missing in the game
That’s awesome! Glad you liked the video and thanks for supporting them!
Purchased. Thank you!
Hope you like it as much as I do!
Very good Bob.
I've used harvesting and monster looting for potion components, but the addition of crafting magical amor, weapons, and other items is a really nice idea. Also the raw components having magical effects are a great feature too (like the banshee dust and ectoplasma example). I think I'll be incorporating several of these ideas into my campaign.
Thank you Bob for sharing and the discount code!
It’s super fun! Glad you like the ideas!
That's an Awesome system! When I was working on my RPG with RPGMaker, I'd done a system like that!
Very cool!
I've tried to do loot in my games, but it's always ended up being "get everything" or needlessly complicated. This ruleset is stupidly simple. 10+CR DC is genius. And the idea of broken pieces requiring slightly more gold to craft than in tact... Chefs kiss.
Yep! It's a really elegant solution!
Dude, I just bought all these books. So glad to see a video come out for it. Great minds think alike it seems indeed!
That's awesome!
Thanks Bob! Just bought the whole darn bundle :D
Wow! That's awesome. Glad you like these ideas!
Aw yeah, Anne Gregersen! I haven't read the Monster Loot books yet but I use her Bloodied & Bruised supplements all the time to make my combats more interesting. Maybe now's the time to take a look at those Loot titles and throw Bob some affiliate credits.
My buddies and I kind of have a hub town that’s been getting upgraded throughout the campaign, and with it we are upgrading store buildings as well. Our blacksmith forge got upgraded by installing a hydra heart into the pump. A good amount of suspended belief, but it’s been really fun looking at the worlds loot and material and seeing what might stick as an upgrade material for our hub town.
Don't forget to use promo code "BOBLOOT", yes Bo Bloot
Damn. I'm running Out of the Abyss campaign for nine months and I wish I had this book in the beginning. We have an artificer who started to craft tons of stuff in downtime and other characters who usually help him to do it. There were hundreds of dead derro, undead, gnolls, miconids and demons apart from many beasts from Underdark. Now I remember every monster and wonder what practical things could be found apart from some flesh and skin to rot or be eaten
Good on you for handling it on your own for so long!
Love Anne's stuff, my players are hot to use monster parts for equipment crafting and the like, I know it's gonna come in handy.
Awesome! Glad you found this helpful!
Fun fact. Giant toes are used to make Giants Strength Potions. The type of giant dictates the type of potion :D
Mimic rations are the best rations, because they mimic what ever you want to eat, like that fine lobster dinner, or that pizza topped to your preference, or those $300 ice-cream with gold in it, etc etc.
I remember I had a 3.5 ranger who LOVED to skin EVERYTHING. He had a side business making leather goods for sale, selling to all the places we traveled to. I do remember grossing out my party tho when I harvested a few troglodytes, and lizardfolk we dispatched. They had no issues with things that they couldn't possibly talk to, being crafting mats. I argued that since the pieces were already made to fit a humanoid form, that it would make it take less time/scrap. Mind you that this is also the same party that had ZERO ISSUE with "sending my character on a long sea voyage" which is code for my elf wizard was murdered for his bones...... We were playing in a Paladium RPG. Elf bones are a good selling material per ounce, and so my GM used medical stats and a lot of math to figure out my skeletal weight. Then dropped a haul of gold on the party, and I had to roll a new character :( who didn't even get a share of the gold, just some starting gear..... 30 years later, still a 'lil salty about that. Morel of the story is, never play a character that is worth more dead than alive.
Yikes on that "long voyage" story. Sounds like a group and GM I'd rather not play with.
My players will have to use this in my upcoming GrimDark Sun campaign. They will have to scrounge for everything including water. There are no Iron age weapons so whey will need to hunt dangerous creatures of Athas to "progress". This video gives me a lot of inspiration!
This looks like a more refined version of something my Wife and I use when dm'ing that we found on gmbinder. It's super fun and gives the ability for that random monster encounter to be more than a minor time sink for higher level characters
Yep it's a pretty elegant little ruleset!
I would limit the ability to loot to those proficient in the medicine skill or maybe the nature skull for the actual harvesting of monster bits. I can tell you from experience that if you introduce this mechanic into your game, it will BECOME like a quarter of your entire game time.
Sounds fun to me! Haha
Letsss gooo new BOB vid. 🔥🔥🔥
I appreciate your enthusiasm! :)
This is awesome. I think another great thing you can do with some of this stuff is give these looted items to your NPC and enemies. Why wouldn't they be looting things as well? Really creative magical items with unpredictable effects.
Very true!
This video was amazing. Gonna look at getting the book now. Loved your example "Oh crap we're fighting a troll, get the fire elemental stuff" 😂😂
Thank you! Yeah lol that’s always what it feels like when your group actually has the perfect item for the fight!
@@BobWorldBuilder the video was also perfectly timed as my group just killed some basilisks and decided to try and strip them clean haha 😂
In my game, our DM has a copy of the three hammonds harvesting handbook. It might be an alternative to what Bob reviewed.
That's another extremely popular system from the DMs Guild! I just have more experience with this one personally
My party used the head of a blue dragon as a home defense system. We hung it up on the wall like a trophy and set it up to shoot it’s breath weapon if anybody uninvited came in.
The table I play and DM created similar tables for crafting by harvesting different things from magical creatures. I’m my home brew I have an NPC that specializes in obtaining those types of things. I was running a low level campaign for the table and had a grand plan……. The campaign went off the rails when the PCs met the NPC. They now work for him searching for wondrous items and hard to find spell components.
One of my favorite sessions was when they were searching for gold dragon scales for an artificer who was commissioned to make a suit of dragon scale armor. They didn’t fight the dragon, the fighter and the dragon played dragon chess while the bard told stories and the rest of the party collected shed dragon scales. It was awesome.
I live for this kind of stuff when I’m a player!
bought the book already after last video. awesome! Btw: regarding skyrim, there are tons of mods to "fix" looting to be more realistic, but I bet mr Bob already knows that. anyway, thanks for pointing out this book, it is really cool stuff👍🏻
One of my players decided he'd skin a Gorgon (the bull not Medusa) for armour. He had lost his equipment earlier due to a draw from the Deck of Many Things. I had to improvise of course. But it worked well enough.
Deck of Many Things?? That sounds like a fun campaign!
@@BobWorldBuilder Thank you. After many, many years of avoiding the Deck, I've now used it four or five times in different campaigns and it only fizzled out once. Never "broke" the game, although it did cause a retcon of the main arc of a campaign.
@@southron_d1349 Oh no. Now I´m actually tempted again to use it in my own campaign. It wouldn´t even fall out of the themes or story of it... Though: Any major tip from these experiences of yours?
@@tjajaja When the Deck appears, I make it clear that 1) No one is obligated to draw and aren't being spoilsports if they don't want to and 2) they may choose to draw up to three cards. Unless a card compels them to draw another, of course. Last, until a player has drawn all their cards, no one else can. This means it's possible for two players to draw the Moon and have d3 Wishes each.
In case someone draws the Key or the Sun, make sure you have assigned magical items to each PC ahead of time - or at least a list of possibilities.
After all those who wished to draw are done, the Deck vanishes. No fobbing it off to an enemy nor keeping it for later.
The Donjon and the Knight appeared three times. While one of the Donjon draws helped bring a fun conclusion to a short campaign, both it and the Knight were a bit of a nuisance by popping up so much.
I replaced the Knight with the Hierophant (receive a free feat), the Donjon was replaced with the Wheel (your ancestry changes according to a roll on the Reincarnation table), and the Basilisk - which results in immediate petrification with no save - replaced the Void.
One problem did crop up. A PC drew the Balance and was changed to an Evil alignment. Another player meta-gamed and decided he didn't like that PC anymore. He couldn't be persuaded his character could have no knowledge of the change. There's always one! Fortunately, the campaign ended a couple of sessions later so it wasn't too bad.
Hope this helps you.
Troll's blood is more than a mere potion of healing. It heals you each round for a minute. So it's more like a potion of regeneration, which is actually another effect you could give it, maybe with additional preparation. The possibilities are wonderfully limitless and this is such a useful system. This is the kind of stuff that should already be in the rules.
with the feathers you could increase the range of the weapon by a fixed amount of feet
Nice idea!
While I know it would only complicate things, after hearing about how looting slows gameplay down, slime outbreaks (or any other decomposing monster), adventurers getting fined if they didn't process the bodies correctly, or even them later hearing of an outpost/settlement being duressed from an onslaught from the outbreak
Heliana's Guide to Monster Hunting is another really great resource along these same lines. I've been introducing monster harvesting and crafting in my game and I think it's going really well!
Great stuff friend 👏 👍
This is awesome. It will certainly enrich our campaign. Thanks
In the first Savage Worlds game in which I played, we started out with a single weapon and a suit of clothing. We had no armor. Our first big fight was against a bunch of degenerate serpent men. Throughout the fight, the GM emphasized how tough their hides were - part of helping us learn the system of having to deal enough damage to exceed their toughness. After the fight, my character, who had the Survival skill, skinned them all and took the hides to a leather worker to get the party leather armor. The GM never let me forget that I skinned sentient (just barely) creatures.
Outdoor Education Specialists 👍
These look cool
This reminds me of my old character I had. They were a guild Artisan blacksmith / armorer. They made weapons and armor out of monster parts. Mostly out of necessity because they were not rich enough for regular materials. And also they eat monsters because again they were poor. As a result they had an array of resistances from electricity all the way to poison.
Had a player who wanted to speak to a skeleton he met, which was obviously not able to speak. so he built it a faux lung made of leather and a tiny piston that inflates and deflates it, and vocal chords made out of pig skins. i am not sure if this is something i should have allowed but it was a great rp moment and it was fun creating a NPC together, which is definetly one of my favourites.
I'm interested to see how these would play out alongside an equipment durability system, so say your armor broke after a fight but you can haul a spider hide back to camp and restock.
I like the idea, and it would work great with one of my game ideas.
Awesome! Glad you found this helpful!
I forst used Hammund for loot and crafting in our Icewind Dale campaign. However I always ended up a bit stumped when the party encountered monsters i troduced in Icewind dale or beasts and humanoids since those were ofte. Not covered or very little.
Recently found the Monster LOOT, and it is so amazingly organized. And it covers every single unique creature and even important people in Icewind dale. And it feels a little more lightweight and easier to to use. Deffi etly a recoendation.
Thanks! I always had a bad time with loot, it was something thar I've never known how to do in my campaigns and almost everytime my players wanted to loot the bosses and minor creatures, but I never knew exactly how to do that. It's a great way to help DMs!
These books would be awesome for my Bard/Rogue character who used her share of the party's first real quest reward gold to hire thugs and start her own thieve's guild. They steal from Waterdeep and sell in Skullport.
After hiring a few more later on, she split the guild in half. Half steal from Waterdeep to sell in Skullport, the other half trails the party to scavenge any loot they left behind, at which point they take back to their shop in Skullport run by a recruited, named NPC (Marta Moonshadow for anyone playing Mad Mage); whom we give gold to stock ingredients and other necessary adventuring gear (rations, torches, shovels, picks, etc etc), as part of her salary we give her any scrolls we find for her to add to her spellbook, and to enchant finer loot we find, such as jeweled crowns, exquisite rings, etc.
I'm a long time player of video games, especially RPGs and Action-Adventure titles; so looting ingredients for crafting has always been a fun aspect for me. I absolutely love this idea of finding rare ingredients for magical gear enchanting, hauling them to town for a crafter to make. Just a bonus my character owns the shop where these are made in our campaigns main hub. >:)
(This is also why everyone in my party has about 8000 gold each, but my Rogue/Bard has 17,000. She reinvests a lot, and rarely leaves anything behind. And for anyone concerned about greed, my rogue/bard is a Yuan-Ti from Chult whose just exploring other cultures, and gold has little meaning to her. She's the group's most trustworthy treasurer besides the cleric.)
I've done some research into certain potion components. Nail clippings are what is used to make the various potions of Giant Strength.
For monsters like elementals, because I usually describe them vanishing into thin air when they die, I would have the player roll a sleight of hand check mid-combat, for if they want to keep something from the elemental, they have to steal it when it's alive, as part of a physical attack. Kinda like Rikku in FFX.
Also, I think giants' fingernails are used for potions of giant strength. I guess toenails work just as well, which would explain why they're a cool and valuable loot ^^ I don't know if the author compiled the list of ingredients for spells and potions, if so, what an achievement since it's not the most fascinating read!
The reason Giant's Toes are so valuable (besides working as trophies) is because they are used to craft potions of Giant Strength.
You promised
You delivered
Yes, yes, and yes
It is surprising that Wizards have not integrated a similar system natively into D&D
Bravo, thanks for the review. It will make many players happy
Should you have the players auto loot for expediency though ? It might be boring for all players to wait for one player to loot at every single corpse they encounter
Do this all the Time - mostly, when the GM allows such for RP and as GM when Players roleplay around this and not just "grab additional loot".
Dragon Blood f.E. grants AC when rubbed on the Skin or similar Items - so it makes Leather better but is useless on Iron. It also can be used to create or up the Quality of Armor.
The Scales and the Grease are for the Iron Tools like Weaponry or Plate for the same Stuff.
The Harvesting Roll is always done with the Roll which helps to categorize and get insight into the Monsters Stats.
And Yes, different Proficiencies can get different Stuff from the same monster for different Purposes.
This Stuff is the "GP" the Players get from the Fight. My Players always get bareley enough to come by - they have to do such Stuff and trickery to make a profit.
The "insanely high Quest Reward" for the BBEG? Well, they get little Quests where f.E. the Mage has been subject of a break-in and offers 50GP for solving the Case.
Same goes for the next Tavern Owner and his Family Sword. And the next local Vendor who misses his magical Ring.
They know someone collects thoose, but they do not know why and how. They do not know that this goes on for a long Time until they find out it is the BBEG and by defeating him they solve all the Cases at all - hundreds and hundreds of small Quests they can then cash in.
Loot is important - and just rolling on a List and adding said Stuff to your List is boring. Give it meaning by having to sell it to specific Merchants or have it have a expiration date.
Have it been part of the Chars most beloved Piece of Equipment that gets outdated and can be upgraded with this.
F. E. have the Fairy Dust have be able to upgrade the Crystal of Rainbows (shoots a prismatic Ray) to the next DC or have it be a optional Component in "Fairy Spells" upping Save DC or such.
Have it basically be a "Potion" or be part of a Potion.
Something like this.
Recently added these to my game, players enjoy it. keep up the great work Bob, love the channel.
I had a Wizard that loved collecting creature parts.
Our Smith made Bone Claw Gauntlets out of 2 dead [that little green devil thing].
Hearing about all these different D&D modules always gives me something to think about design-wise while working on my own ttrpg.
I'd like to try mimic rations. Maybe they turn into wooden/stone-looking meat.
I heard one bit of lore, saying that adding powdered brain of a greater yugoloth to the material components of mind-controlling spell has some chance to make said spell irresistible. That sounds like a fun (yet somewhat unbalanced) idea
Back in college we played a ranger who was all about making equipment out of slain enemies, especially dragons. It was fun and the DM gave us a lot of freedom to come up with creative new pseudo-magic items. It did make us realize how broken crafting was in D&D 3.5E though, especially when it comes to art items. A magic sword made of dragon bone that deals lightening damage = ~2 weeks down time. A non-magical wedding ring with an engraving of a dragon = over 70 years!?
You need the giant toes to make potions of giants strength (the nails are needed)
I was coming here to point this out. 😊
I made a set of very dangerous magically charged giant beetle swarms (one for each flavor of magic), and added a bit of information about them, including suggestions on parts for harvesting and what to do with them, because it should be a thing. i got lucky and fount an artist who is also an entemologist to do the beetle art, so its about as accurate as giant fantasy beetles can be!
I'd totally use wolf skin for hoods and capes for arctic climate. Wolf fur doesn't really take on icing, so it's great in front of mouths of breathing humanoids.
Of course, to know this, it would require either being a skilled artisan working in the climate or a survival check.
And before you ask me: Yes, this is real and the polar explorers did exactly this.
8:55 yeah I'd have mods to the tip or shaft maybe increase damage but the feathers could ignore the close range limit or increase all the range in some way.
Found this at a good time, I was thinking of running a campaign based on Monster Hunter so this is a godsend
This is epic! I'm totally buying this! Thanks for making this video Bob!
I love the crating system in Kibblestasty's Compendium of Craft and Creation
This is too amazing of a book omfg Im gonna for sure buy it
quite cool reminds me of hamunds harvesting handbook. It also have some cool crating recipes pc's can use.
Oh seems like a fun supplement for my monster hunting campaign. We mainly use Helianas guide to monster hunting for the core of it with harvesting and crafting and the loot items showcased here would go together well with it.
Maybe thats a supplement to look at if you want to make a 3d party deep dive video again.
Is there a mythological or literature origin for harvesting Giant's Toes? Seems like a weirdly specific thing to harvest from a giant.
I actually realized after filming that it’s also loot from killing giants in Skyrim! Don’t know where Skyrim got it from though
Very cool! Great job walking through the document. I'm going to check it out.
Appreciate this video! 👍👍
I assume mimic rations are like tofu, just take on the flavor (and texture?) of whatever they are combined with.
it would be funny if it was just chunks of wood
For my game I think of starting weapons as weapons players can upgrade rather than trade out. To the handle, to the metal of the weapon, etc. Allowing my players to customize their weapons.
So then when they loot a monster they think more critically about what materials they could maybe use to their weapons. Or what other party members might benefit from.
Monster heads are great items too. The heads act as a trophy.
hamund's harvesting handbook series is also really good. But only covers The MM, VGTM, & MKTF. The Monster loot series has much more variety.