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The Effects of Age on Loot in D&D
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- Опубліковано 3 сер 2024
- When your players sack an ancient temple or clear a crumbling dungeon they expect to find some loot. But an often overlooked feature of these older dungeons is spoilage and decay. Find more encounter ideas at www.masterthedungeon.com/
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00:00 Are you accounting for age?
00:39 Consumables and use by dates
03:52 Ancient Gear
05:31 Treasure and Coins
07:15 Book Durability
08:42 Magic Items
#DungeonsAndDragons #DnD #Animatic
I can imagine a wizard picking up an old book, only to have it crumble in his hands, the dust sifting between his fingers. As the dust falls to the floor, the weight of the book does not go from his hands, and the ancient writing floats in place as if the book was still there. He “opens” this book with a motion of opening some real invisible book, and the weight shifts as the pages turn in the same motion. Now he has an invisible book maintained by the still visible, strongly magical writing within.
Imma stealing that.
@@AlbertaGeek go for it. Just remember to tell me how people liked it.
that’s fucking awesome, love this idea
"Watcha got there?"
"Ghost book."
"A book about ghosts?"
"No."
I don't remember where I heard it from, but I like the idea of magical items being almost like radioactive after being left alone for so long. Like a spellbook left in an old tome begins to "leak" magic into the surrounding area. Maybe it contained a frost spell so the room it's in is frozen solid dispite it being in a desert tomb
I think that would be from web dm
But spellbooks contain a ton of spells... so while this works for nice single-focus or themed magic items, it doesn't work so well for generic spellbook or general-use items like the staff of the magi
Terry Pratchett had a very similar system like that in his stories.
@@lucasriddle3431 General magic items could maybe pour out a spectrum of 'magical radiation' around itself. Maybe an old spellbook from a master magician has created a grotto around itself that is also on fire and really cold. It's also cool to imagine a location being a jungle that has sprouted from a completely filled spellbook
fun fact: wizard spell books are not magical they are just vellum and ink with the complex magical formulas and component breakdowns written in them
they are like a chemistry text book. the book itself cant make acid and explode but the knowledge within can teach you how to make things do so yourself
GM: "Why are you gathering all that rusty scrap, cleric?"
Cleric of the forge preparing his channel divinity: "Just a small project..."
*CLERIC WHY ARE YOU GATHERING ALUMINUM INGOTS?!*
A small correction, even after 1000 years the sliver will be fine, once the top layer tarnishes it will act as a shield, encasing and protecting the rest of the metal from tarnishing. Silver is inherently a very soft metal but it will not become softer due to this tarnish, as its just a thin layer coating the item. a good sanding will remove the tarnish.
just make it so it requires cleaning or smelting before it's worth something
Silver tarnish is black, though, so maybe a check to find it in a dim dungeon room...?
This is good. Players could spend downtime during a long rest cleaning the coins. I wonder how many coins you could clean in an hour or two?
Small point of clarification: copper oxide generally protects the metallic copper underneath, so while old copper coins, artifacts, etc, will be oxidized on the outside, they would still be valuable and useful.
Even if it was badly corroded, you should be able to recover it with a blast furnace or magical equivalent (depending on your setting's tech level). It might require some chemistry to get the oxygen out, but you'd probably be doing that anyway if you're smelting raw ore. Otherwise you'll be throwing away huge amounts of slag.
Yep. Copper Oxide is known as a noble rust as it seals the surface and prevents deeper rust. This is why the Statue of Liberty has not fallen apart dispite being near the ocean. Hell a lot of people like the looks of old copper for decorations so a pile of old coins in an interesting shape may not be worth much as money but may be of value to a noble as a conversation peace.
And, let's not forget, "Copper" coins are often minted from the more durable alloy Bronze, as were US One Cent coins up until 1982, for example. =^[.]^=
I once let my player characters find a rotting chest full of black and green coins.
The black coins were silver, and the green ones were a corroded-together pile of copper coins.
They took the silver and left the copper behind.
On vellum: wizard spellbooks are all written on vellum (if it’s an actual book, anyways), so while yes, dark spells would be written on vellum, most other spells would be too.
From the looks of it honestly anything important? (though maybe not on calf skin specifically)
While Calf skin is the one we like to refer in a lighthearted manner, there is an other creature thats skin is just as exelent if not better to write on... You guessed it! Human skin. The back of younger specimens to be exact.
Just something for those who want their libraries darker.
@@hadarc01 sounds like it'd make for a good replacement to use for the _evil_ books? And then you have normal parchment for everything else important? (I wonder though if you could even tell human skin apart from other skin by the time it's been processed?)
In particular, an adventuring wizard would want a spellbook that can survive getting wet
@@wednes3day im now imagining finding volumes of vellum books documenting the finances and population data of the region
an idea i have is food and/or potions that are preserved using salt, which are preserved well and have no side effects but dehydrate the players. the salted food might even be a trap in a desert dungeon with no water, so the players slowly die of thirst. salt can be a curse or a blessing. use it wisely.
it could even cause salt overdose, threatening to give levels of exaustion and nausea immediately through dehydration.
mushrooms can be used to preserve stuff this way to, causing poison and disease instead of dehydration. no matter how delicious it looks, fear the mushroom pizza.
it could even cause necrosis and breathlessness, even needing amputation
There are three ways to preserve food long term (and a couple of short term methods as well). Salt curing, sugar curing (sugar does not spoil unless wet, and can be used to preserve meats), dehydration (jerky), sealed in oil (short term, but it works), and lastly, coat in citric acid (very short term). Curing meat with salt or sugar takes a lot of the preservative (pounds for every pound of meat), and takes time (days). Dehydration takes only hours if done right, but is labor and material intensive. Oil preserving was the most popular and cheapest way of preserving food, and can last surprisingly long in the right conditions (they found edible olives in the Pompeii ruins, for example).
*Honey!*
That stuff is amazing. It preserves pretty good, at least under the right circumstances. Archeologists found containers filled with honey, which was just as good as the day it was put into those containers, about 2000 years later.
Source? They opened one and tried it.
"Do you expect to find a restaurant in the dungeon."
A Bard looks at the monster manual like it's a dating app. A Barbarian looks at it like it's a takeout menu.
If you aren't eating the monsters your killing, then you aren't getting the most out of your encounters.
I recall in symbaroum, we used troll bones to cook bone glue.
The gm explained the legendary levels of bad the smell was :P
Fried Phylactery 😋
There might be some moral quandries on eating arguably sentient creatures, but given you are just as likely to run into at least some beasts and non-sentient enemies, I can certainly see this as a way to extend the team's rations.
Bard tries to cook an undead creature, forces party to evacuate dungeon due to smell, eventually all the other undead leave for the same reason
@@samuels1123 damn, when the undead evacuate coz of smell, then one knows the smell is baaaad.
The D&D module "The Hidden Shrine of the Tamoachan" (You can find a modern 5e version of it in "Tales from the Yawning Portal") had a lot of great stuff like this!
All the potions in the dungeon were reduced to piles of magic dust within the bottles, but if the PCs mixed wine with the potion dust they could return the potion to full usefulness! I highly recommend reading through that adventure for ideas on a truly old feeling dungeon.
That's actually a really cool way of handling ancient potions. Definitely going to be taking notes on that one.
Vinum Vita!
That’s what I came here to say.
Great minds think alike.
🙂
@@Vahktang And here. Old school players unite! =^[.]^=
Don't forget about the effects of time on the "occupants" as well. Old golems and other automatons gone awry or gaining sentience over time can make for fun characters and might not even stay in the dungeon. The raw power of ancient magical items might leak out in the form of elementals or other critters of pure magic. Sentient magical items might have long gone insane or into a deep slumber that takes its own quest to awaken. Age and decay can be a good way to include or introduce more powerful and interesting critters without wiping the party. An old vat of healing potion in the arsenal may have become mutagenic and started to leak into the water supply around the dungeon creating aberrations, this can also be a way to balance a "better with age" potion. These can be part of the challenge and the hook as to why you're investigating the dungeon or an explanation of how monsters in the area keep showing up.
Side notes:
In real life, vellum was the best preservative material for writing for a very long time, such that many important writings were written on calfskin and lambskin. The Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance, are mostly written on vellum. (About 90% of the scrolls are vellum, compared to less than 9% for papyrus. The remainder are on sheets of bronze, which of course means they're not scrolls.)
Another long-term consumable is honey. Honey contains natural antibacterial enzymes, such that it was sometimes used for embalming. The record for edible honey currently stands at 3,000 years, found in a tomb in Egypt. (Glad I wasn't the taste-tester, but it must have been interesting.)
As an additional point to the deterioration notes, it was thought for many years that Ancient Romans didn't use doors. We'd found many houses, after all, but no doors. Turns out the doors were made of wood, and had thus rotted away.
Partial points on the honey, the sugar content is also so high, that in of itself is a natural preservative.
Oh yeah, honey!
Totally forgot that. Honey is silly.
Antibacterial, food, unbelievable shelf life, sweetener.
Totally the group can find a few bottles/jars of honey in an ancient tomb.
I also once saw on a local antique roadtrip episode, that they had a bottle of 100 year old "saft".
Saft is a sugary flavor concentrate common in Sweden. Just add water. Usually made from strawberries, oranges, raspberries and the like.
It usually doesn't store that well, but due to the high sugar and in the right circumstances, it can survive longer than expected.
question, how do we know what percentage of scrolls were written on one vs the other when the thing were comparing is how one decays a lot faster than the other, it could have been equal amounts of both but only some on the less stable material lasted, couldnt it?
@@athena1491 Well, there's usually fragments of the destroyed scrolls left, but yes, guessing percentages when one thing decays faster than the other is a bit iffy.
@@Klomster88 fascinating, thank you for explaining
Another aspect of age might be that the armor with a nice bonus is also terribly old-fashioned, and you wouldn't be caught dead wearing it in public
Possible idea: The party enters an ancient fortress and find some monsters, They of course fight, but They find that their weapons do little damage and their armor doesn’t protect them as Well as it should normally for some Strange reason, but the monsters Seem oddly careful around the rusted old weapons, in desperation, the party’s fighter tries attacking with a rusted old sword and find that it cleaves as Well as their Magical sword. The truth: the fortress is surrounded by a Magical field that swaps the capabilities of any item, Magical or otherwise, with a fitting item that is atleast 80 years old in the fortress and only items that have been in the fortress for at least a decade and a half.
What a fantastically indepth look into something I'd not usually think of, but you could actually use all of these tips to make an epic adventure. Great ideas, thanks! Hope I can make videos as insightful as yours one day!
Thank you! Sometimes a small detail can make a big change in game play and story telling.
Very interesting video with some good ideas to add a bit realism to a campaign! 👍 Here are two ideas how DM may circumvent effects of aging:
1. Place non-magical treasures in a sealed vault or describe to the party, that some care was given to preserving delicate items. Think of the tomb of Tutankhamun, where even wooden objects were found after 3200 years!
2. A good source of fresh supplies (food, water, etc.) deep in a dungeon can be a previous, fallen expedition. Finding a group of dead adventures can also be used as a warring to the party (something must have killed the previous group) or as a starting point for a side quest after leaving the dungeon (i.e. returning a letter to a fallen adventurer’s family or learning, that some else is interested in obtaining treasures from the dungeon).
Some great additions, thank you!
Also you could make a "magic refrigerator" that instead of using cold simply acts as a sort of temporal stasis chamber to keep items preserved at an exact moment in time. (This obviously only works in certain situations and assumes the preservation magic also held up for thousands of years)
@@jasonreed7522 in scifi or more modern settings you could also make it canned goods or MREs
Personally I think any leftover weapons and armor would only hold up if they were made of something other than steel. Bronze swords from the classical period often held up significantly better than steel swords of the medieval era.
You can take the "What type of place was this dungeon and how does this change its food?" and apply that to potions. What's the temperature and environment and how does that affect old potions?
If the dungeon is cold, the potions could freeze into magical chunks of ice.
Hot and they could pop & evaporate, maybe breathing the air slowly causes the effects to come onto you and...oh no, your party has been breathing the air of an old poison potion for some time now! Better hurry :)
frozen potion could concentrate it if you discard the ice, like with beer brewing
The “evaporated potions that are still effective, and effecting you” brings to mind the “mixing potions” rules…
I like to think of the same when it comes to traps, sure a freshly constructed pitfall trap will likely work as intended, but have any wooden components rotted away? the covering for it, have any mechanisms crumbled with age, perhaps that spear trap will not retract properly once triggered, or a trap that drops live venomous snakes on some poor unfortunate under it... well... Snakes need food and water so... snake skeletons... Ooohh, but this is the lair of a Necromancer, the snake bones rattle and reform... or even combine into something resembling a hydra made of tiny bones! delightful possibilities!
And on the other hand, that bridge was made by skilled laborers with quality lumber and a keen eye. Let’s see how their work held up over the last 500 years, shall we?
I was thinking of doing something like this, it was gonna be a water jet trap that was intended to cut through a creature like a laser, but due to erosion, it was no longer functional. Most of the dungeon was like that, and the traps that did work sometimes went off in weird ways, half the time the dangerous trap would be on the ground they just past. This was because it was intended to keep things in, not just out.
I actually had an in lore explanation as a DM as to why potions and such could be found in certain dungeons, still perfectly usable. The answer was : safety standards. The Dwarven Empire (basically an old world spanning empire that collapsed a few thousand years ago by the time the story starts) was extremely magically advanced, and had been around enough to have the equivalent of food packaging and sterilization standards for potions. Thus potion vials and bottles had a seal similar in effect to the 'clone' spell, where as long as the vessel remains undisturbed (not opened or damaged) whatever is in it is effectively in stasis and will endure indefinitely.
Ok thats an awesome explanation
Honey, honey has antibodies in it and thus even when exposed to dry air will last for at least accouple years; if in a sealed container may even last longer.
Honey is a great answer!
As far as we know, Honey just...doesn't expire if kept properly. Some archaeologists found honey dating back some 3,000 years and reported it was perfectly edible.
Part of honey's self preservative status comes from being 80+% sugar, it simply dehydrates microbes on top of the bee antibodies in it
For old potions, I use the same "mixing potions" table from AD&D 2e I use when characters drink a potion while another is still active. It includes all the effects you mentioned plus a few more.
I love the narrator's voice- calm, steady, and eell-paced. The creators' ideas are always well-thought out and very well researched. I am so happy to have found this channel!
Amazing video, I love when you introduce realism into game elements that usually get overlooked. My players will love this
Apologies in advance to your players haha
Excellent points to build the story with creativity and a bit of realism.
the magic potion actually become a slime
I literally have an encounter in "Out of the Box Encounters" where a potion has been left for so long that it has become a sentient ooze.
DM: "you enter what was at the time the armory, piles of rusted iron, once great blades and plates crumbl-"
the hoarding rogue: "I gather as much as i can fit into my bag of holding, the better looking stuff first."
DM: "B-but that's all junk..."
Rogue: "Some blacksmith is probably dying to get their hands on some iron to reforge!"
“We have a party member with Mend, it will all be fine, eventually.”
8:20 I know it's a year old, but certain vellums like lamb had associations with purity and holiness. So skin books don't need to be evil, they could be good.
Yeah, cultures change.
One could even write a culture for a world, that finds human skin vellum to be a way of honoring the dead because they become fonts of knowledge.
It would be an odd culture, but not unfeasible.
Said culture could also perhaps write all its evil shit on papyrus. So all the scrolls the party finds are evil as shit.
With the squemish characters needing to come to terms with that the clerical good guy magic is all written on human skin (or just cowskin, which is just normal) while the murder death rituals are all written on papyrus.
Yeah, if you want to write an evil book you should write it on the skin of intelligent beings. Maybe you could tattoo the words on the backs of shackled prisoners before flaying the skin of their living bodies before preparing it and binding it into a tome of ultimate evil.
@@Klomster88 That actually works pretty well with an idea I had for a society in a world I'm building. The basics of it are that the society uses necromancy in their daily lives, but has extensive rules and laws surrounding the rules of it to avoid abuses. Raising the Dead, for example, is only allowed with pre-mortem consent of the dead in the form of a will detailing the activities the person allows their body to be used in (such as an old farmer might have a will saying that if he dies, he wants to continue helping his family by continuing to work the farm up to the next decade or some such, town guards might allow their bodies to be risen with the situation that their families receive the pay they would earn for continuing to serve the guard, etc). People could even sign agreements that their bodies are to be studied after their death, much like some people do today.
The idea that human skin might be used for magic books or important writing honestly even sounds within the purview being an organ donor.
@@josephperez2004 Feel free to steal that idea as much you want.
Seems like an interesting place to walk into.
"Why is there zombies everywhere?"
"Oh, they're just working on their post-mortem-pension."
"Their what?"
"Well a nice tomb to spend their undead days in doesn't pay itself you know."
In the last campaign I ran (still technically running), my players found ancient tomes and scrolls from a long extinct race that vanished roughly 89,000 to 100,000 years ago. They had to be extremely careful when handling them or else the tomes and scrolls crumbled to dust.
The magic writing surviving longer than the book is cool
A stone archway covered in runes long since collapsed suddenly eats a chunk of the party's magic and shifts to reform the rune structure, the entire archway was covered in runes and so soon the entire passage is clear and safe to use good as new
the idea of the writing lasting longer than the paper sounds amazing
definitely going to try it out
I love the idea of a spell book where the book itself has decayed away and all that is left is a stack of spells in the shape of a book.
Excellent points. One time when I was a sole survivor and I was the mighty 3rd Level . My 1st level newbie had nothing. The DM fully expected I would parley my treasure to get these guys up to speed. I said. I go to the farmer ( someone we had good relation with) and rented his plow horse and cart. I took the group back to our first dungeon. I had these guy grab every piece of junk steel in the place. We also found two sleeping ORCs who was nice enough to donate their stuff. Hell I even took the decorative steel door my late friendly thief companion opened. Made three trips to the local black smith. Who traded serviceable armor and weapon for my new friends in trade for all this smelt. Raw iron to be reformed is far far more valuable then raw iron ore! We even accidently found a +1 dagger we missed the first time. Being a GOOD Character I sprung for these new players to be Trained with my funds. My DM was impressed and granted them 2nd level.
On food; honey last basically forever if it doesn’t get contaminated, and even then, certain contaminats, such as yeast, can cause it to become mead.
A concept: healing potions ferment over time, deepening in color from a vibrant red to a deep mahogany, and after long enough, it becomes a more concentrated viscous substance with little color left. Upon reaching this stage, the mundane ingredients now past their prime, makes the potion useless to the living, but not the dead (or undead for that matter). It can be used to resurrect someone who is recently deceased, or be used as a healing potion for the undead :)
The cork used as a stopper would likely deteriorate and pollute the potion. Wine has to be stored in specific ways to prevent this from happening. So, it's reasonable to assume a potion would suffer a similar fate.
How open are you to -crab- spider legs?!
Another neat thing to consider, in real life, older versions of a country's currency can actually be a valuable collector's item and could be worth much more than it was when it was the current form of tender to the right collector. So, even if those gold coins have the face of an evil tyrant and might not be spendable, it might be worth hanging onto if you happen to stumble upon a collector of old world artifacts or even a museum.
sees rusted gear:
EVERYONE in my group, including me:
RAW CRAFTING MATERIAL!
He defeated dragons,liches and demons, but was taken out by a dubious sausage...
There were many different writing materials used in the past: clay or stone tablets, papirus (reeds woven and beaten together, then rolled into a scroll), wood, bark, parchment and vellum, and finally wood-based paper. People used to write on vellum as the primary material, but since it was expensive to manufacture relative to paper, it gradually fell out of use.
To add onto this, it only REALLY fell out of use in the 20th century, there are even rumors where people used mummy linen from the 1800s to make up for a lack of resources, because paper regardless of whether it's mulberry, flax, or rice, is intensive to make and for a long time wasn't practice to recycle, while animal skin "paper" [parchment] is easy to make, can be "washed" with urine to clean the ink and then reused several times, as well as lasting longer and being somewhat more decay resistant.
One notable example of parchment use is in torah scrolls, that has is specially treated to create very high quality and long-lasting works.
My easiest go-to for old potions - instability. Sure, they are liable to still work, but they're highly likely (around 100% probable) to have side effects, also known as "roll on the Wild Magic Table"...
Nothing like drinking a healing potion, only for the guy next to you to get poisoned, or start levitating...
Europeans in the medival times usually used hemp paper (instead of wood paper), which lasts 3 or 4 hundred years in the best circumstances (vs. untreated wood paper, which would have trouble at about 50 years). Parchment paper could last as long as vellum (around 1000 years), so that could be an alternative for the good-aligned spells.
As far as I can tell the only difference between parchment and vellum is whether it's specifically on calf-skin or not? (With that detail being nearly indistinguishable eventually without lab tests)
8:20 I recall a 2nd edition spellbook made from the skins of unicorns by an evil wizard,
I would have always assumed that a magical potion would never spoil but I actually really like your table and will probably use it as is.
Just stumbled across this channel. Love it! Love the artwork and the thought process. Will watch more!
I actually have a similar potion table for “dubious” potions! The effects are almost the same except I have my top spot as a Permanent Effect.
I remember one time a dungeon we raided, The silver weapons we were looking for we’re starting to tarnish
A fun idea for when you want your very large very old dungeon to not collapse by the time the adventure starts and want to throw a spin on the storyline: magic sphere of pure time in the core of the dungeon, it slows down time more the closer you get to it, protecting the inside of the dungeon as though only ten years passed, as they venture back they will find the dungeon degraded a lot during their stay and will emerge a significant time in the future maybe passing a new group of adventurers sent in after the original party never returned after many years
I always over-think this on my dungeon designs. One was a former university overrun by zombie-wizards. They still had a cafeteria with the mummified remains of coffee in the cups. Occasionally, the zombies would "pour a cup" and forget it again to look over their papers. The concept was that dying didn't interrupt their daily routine. :-P
Some poor Imp running around the place doing the admin work, due to making a bargain with the Headmaster/Dean to serve them for their term as Headmaster/Dean.
tried to watch many videos in a row but this music makes me insane!!! feels like a 1minute loop over and over again... cant watch more than one video at one time...
Thank you so much for the Old Potions Table. I am taking that!
/fransicly notes scribbeling/
Wow! The ideas in this video are real treasures. And I am watching RPG-Content for 7Years now.
Nice video! I was planning an old potion maker's shop and then realized that all the potions would be expired...
Maybe, or maybe they're just weird now and have unexpected results!
@@masterthedungeon Maybe! Oh and on the wild magic table what would you put to replace the sorcery points results?
You could try physical effects, like uncontrollable burping for 1d4 hours that automatically makes you fail stealth checks.
@@masterthedungeon Thanks!
5:24 is definitely me that you have to watch out for. You can definitely melt these metals and make some yourself or sell them back in town, assuming you can actually carry them back. Improvise ways to take them back into town like a bag of holding or drag a large canvas or tarp with the items on it or a wagon with a horse outside.
All those tips are very useful. Just a tip from a GM. Make sure that if you include those, to specify that these are irreperable/magically inert. Otherwise you can bet that your party's magic user will figure out a way to repair them or revert the effect time did.
Papyrus and a lot of other old papers can and do hold up to time (Just look at the Dead Sea Scrolls or even the papyrus found in ancient Egyptian tombs) depending on moisture content, exposure, protection from pests, etc. One of the reasons we have issues is that modern paper has a very high acid content in it from the process used, and so crumbles with age as the acid eats away at the structure of the paper.
Thanks for the vid.
Have you read the Gourmet Pyramid arc from Toriko?
Many of the creatures living it are edible and there are even cook books about how to prepare them.
I am really enjoying your videos. I am learning so much. Thank you for doing them. I hope you continue. If you put out a book I will be the first to buy it. Even if it's composed of all the things you have already spoken about in your videos.
Thank you, this is super kind!
@@masterthedungeon You're welcome and it is the truth.
Such great ideas! Neat real-world info too. But the cartoons were the best of all
I once gave my players an enchancted 1lbs log of bologna that maintained freshness and if not fully consumed would regrow over time, with it taking longer the more they've used, also if full could be used as a 1d4+1 weapon. It was one of the more memorable joke items I've used, created it as a response for them looking for food in an ancient dungeon
The paper we use now did not exist a hundred years ago. We currently use wood pulp paper, a quite modern invention designed to bring cost to rock-bottom in exchange for it disintegrating quite quickly. Before that paper was made from linen (the fabric old money was made from) and was significantly more resilient.
"And make sure there aren't any fresh rations in a 1,000 year old crypt."
Meanwhile, in Skyrim... XD
Eat you defeated enemies- Bob the Half Orc Barbarian
My first ever dungeon I ran was a farmer's market cellar full of goblins holding people hostage
Rumour has it hard tack is nigh indestructible.
Hello MtD, do you remember when Conan meet Subotai? And at one point Conan ask "Who are You!", that's me right now. I was completely blown away buy your video (topic & art style). Really liked the potion idea and chart. Random side effects, I would make the player's hate that one, lol. The rusty weapons back in the day had rules where the weapon would have a -1 to hit and/or damage, or worse just depending what kind of shape there in. Came across that rule again in 5e, can't remember now if it was a monster or something else. Just was surprised to see a really old school rule being used today.
Thanks MtD you have a great day.
Thank you! We take a lot of inspiration from older editions.
Don't forget, if the PCs found out about the "Ancient Fortress" from a local rumor, they might not be the first group to go inside. Or, to get through it all. They'll still get xp from killing the monsters and parasites that have persisted in the area, but, the ancient goods they're looking for might be long gone. (Don't hate on the locals, it might be the easiest way for them to get rid of local pests while helping the party level up.)
I like that. All the ancient loot is gone and all that is left, is the loot from the adventurers who died before you.
Prestidigitation, Mending, and some tool proficiencies should be enough to fix many broken and rusted items in a short amount of time.
Also many of those coins with old figures on them whether bad or good would probably have more value than what they would normally be worth if you can find collectors. Clean them with Prestidigitation and fix them with mending or an Artisan tool.
Metal weapons and armor can be fixed in the same way as stated above or you can just smelt everything down into ingots for easier transportation and trade with towns looking for Iron, Silver, Gold, etc.
For the books, it would be probably harder to fix but old rare books can be sold for a lot of cash to wizards, historians, or again collectors.
Many tools could be used as well to fix and restore old items. Alchemist’s supplies, Calligrapher's supplies. Glassblower’s tools, Jeweler’s Tools, Painter’s supplies, and Smith’s tools all have a case for this.
As a DM and as a Player, I go hard on stuff like that because it gives the players small fun goals to work toward during downtime.
Unless the dungeon is filled with undead, the enemies may well be edible. Humanoids won't be on the menu unless the PC is a Lizardfolk, but there's good eating on a dire rat.
Weapon idea: rusted sword, deals additional poison damage equal to half the slashing damage dealt due to rust getting into the victim and it causes the poisoned condition on a critical hit, but if you miss the targets AC by 5 or more and the weapon breaks.
Old coins: these seem to be of little value, but if you find a historian or coin collecter they may be interested in paying you well for such rare finds, especially the more unique coins made before the signifying symbols had standard moulds making them more unique.
half spell scroll: this scroll has been damaged over the years by humidity and dust, you can still cast it, though it will cause a wild magic surge when you do so.
dried food: through time and preservatives this food has dried out, making a days rasions weigh half as much so long as you can find water, also being Jerky, so long as you don't think too much about what it came from or when it tastes pretty good.
ancient prototype: this seems to be an early attempt or a predicessor to a modern magic item such as a bag of holding but with half the storage, or a wand of firebolt made before spells above cantrips could be stored reliably in items. this makes good low level loot so players have a taste of what is to come.
I'm on board with most of these ideas and allowing people to scavenge from wrecked stuff is always a nice way to find some interesting uses for what people might consider junk items.
I think magical books should be somewhat immune to the passage of time. If a wizard is going to spend years/months/weeks working on a magic book I would assume they would spend a little extra time to put some kind of magical protection or runes or something to help preserve it.
I like the old potion effects table though.
Vis a vis the money one finds in dungeons and the electrum criticism, my players have taken the humble and often undervalued coin and turned it into a central pillar of their roleplaying. Without me ever intending to, it has become an speculation device that dictates market prices across entire regions as they either flood the market after raiding a dungeon or painstakingly acquire every single piece of it from the kingdom's treasury. Playing with accountants and stock traders is something else.
This Video is very helpful because I'm running a game were my players are adventuring through 2000 year old dungeons and ruins
I don't usually track rations and any eating in my campaigns tends to be an RP thing rather then a game mechanic. However, I'm currently running a campaign which came to be centered around a Cataco truck. It's essentially the Catbus from "My Neighbor Totoro" mixed with a taco truck. It's not something I planned, the Deck of Many Things did it, but a game that was supposed to be a one shot has been ongoing for almost a year now lol.
I may have to adopt some of these tips for the gastronomically focused campaign my game has become O.0
Now you have me thinking of players snorting an old, dried out, healing potion
Regarding collecting the scrap metals, each lb of iron goes for 1 sp, great early cash source.
I love using age to tell stories, because at the end of the day, a dungeon should tell stories, even if their occupants are away.
In my last campaign, the party worked on a digsite for the government and discovered a teleportation statue that sends them to another location from this temple, and upon finding the key after the original holder was mauled by Umberhulks disturbed by the digging, they used it to teleport and discovered them in a ship.
I'm not here for the events of the story itself, so that can come up another discussion, but in the rooms prior to this that had been dug out before the Umberhulks attacked the crew (They were about 100ft away from a breeding nest), they had taken stuff out, some of which was sold, others were disposed, and some were even decorating the office built into the mouth of the cave.
But the party found a way into this room, opened by 2 casters polarizing baseline magical energy in different manners. They only had one caster working on site, but our party had 2 on hand and pushed onward.
This room, cannonically, had been sealed for over 4k years, and while the ship had been falling apart under the pressures of the earth, and it was far from sealed from moisture, a lot of the wooden barrels survived, and when pried open.... dun duh duh duuuuuh.... rotton black sludge from whatever food had been stored in there, moisture sealed for 4k years.
There was some usable stuff, but it really established how I world build stuff. Nobody has been here for 4k years, why would everything here be useful. Think of a Terrarium that just rots.
3.5 Permanency: Gentle Repose.
Works on any dead body parts of a creature. A hide for vellum, scrolls or leafs for pages. Either way, works perfectly. And even includes itself as the "Lost Magitech of The Before Time" (3.5 bits in a 5e game for continuity); if you'd be so inclined.
Dibs on the 1000 year bottle of rum.
Love this perspective, and in the case of a survival campaign, more reason that Goodberry is flipping broken lol.
The way I use effect of age on loot in my games has already been pointed out. Being pristine objects "good as new" is my go-to hint that a particular item is special/magic. The second is that even broken down ancient stuff might still be worth something, but to a collector/museum.
If the blade of a sword has survived and the hilt has not, maybe the hilt of another still remains?
The head guard of the dungeon may be long gone and his steel sword could be rusted but the hilt may have been gold and survived, wheras an enchanted blade may be all that's left of another weapon. The players may be able to piece together the remains of a few weapons to form something more serviceable.
Rare old gold coins could fetch a high price with a few certain collectors
0:46- Oooh, oh! Honey! Honey lasts basically forever if it's kept properly. Archaeologists found edible honey inside the Egyptian pyramids! Thousands of years old but still just fine to have as a snack.
3:24- "You've been tripping on cactus juice all day and your first instinct is to eat something you find stuck to the wall?!" "I have a natural curiosity..."
5:24- Hmm, perhaps have a character who regularly handles large amounts of broken or rusted items make saves for small amounts of damage from splinters or sharp edges causing nicks or cuts unless they specify taking precautions. If doing the disease route, maybe even have them run the risk of tetanus.
Ancient potion makers may have used honey for potions, since it lasts so long. Thick potions might take longer to drink, but at least they will taste better!
After this vidio i had an Idea to make a Dungeon that looks Too old and Aged. Like... Add Rust on things that doesn't usually... Rust. Or something like that and put a magic(cursed) item that looks perfectly fine. Like... Maybe it was Redirecting effects of Ageing(Rust) on the walls or food for an Eternity(Exaggeration) an gaind a new magic Ability to do that. You can go even further and say that it was a sentient Holy Weapon that didn't wanted to d*e so it turned Evil. Yep. I'm Useing it for my campain
The best vellum is actually made out of fetal calf skin, though the only document I know that was made of that was a specific copy of a religious text.
I thought you said that the finest velum in the world was written on cat skin at first
i say potions go bad, but the stronger the longer it takes.
recently they found a healing potion that someone tested and it would "make them turn into a liquid for a minute and then turn them back."
instead of testing the rest of them they threw it in the hole the found it in with the 10+ extras which I made summon a pyramid full of undead to show up via the effect like that bean magical item.
When a potion ages, I wouldn't say it "goes bad," but it certainly changes. It could be like an alcoholic beverage where it gets better with age, which is why better healing potions cost more. Or maybe they kind of settle apart and have to be shaken up.
to add to this thought Perhaps as a potion ages certain ingredients used in the brewing become more potent while other ingredients lose their potency perhaps turning the potion into something else entirely
i once had the party find money from the ancient times meaning it was like finding a penny from the early 1800s. worth more than face value, but only to collectors.
this series are great! very helpful!
sadly,half of my Dnd friends cant read english :(
anyways, thanks for great content!
1:21 “Create Food and Water” and “Goodberry” remove that issue. So does a dungeon anywhere with wildlife or plants. So does the presence of any monsters that aren’t Undead or Oozes (usually), or (probably) humanoids…but then, the humanoids should have food.
It is almost impossible, RAW, to put a party into a situation where starvation is a possible issue. Even without the “food that talks is not food….or is it?” discussion coming into play.
If an item is magical, then it wont age because it's magical
one things that would take a massive amount of time to or perhaps never, ever degrading. Is glass.
ahh yes fermentation of healing potions
Gold can tarnish as well. With enough time, in conditions like in the ocean, apparently, gold becomes black and can fuse together.
That blue-green coat that forms on copper is actually pretty good, because it protects from further corrosion. So, if you find a pile of copper coins, covered in this Patina, with the coins fused together, chances are good that the coins inside the pile are almost pristine, as the coins on the outside protected the ones underneath.
Items don't have to deteriorate, even if they aren't magical. In a tomb in China, they found a sword, that was there for several thousand years, and there was not even a trace of rust on it. The only sign of age was the layer of dust on it, and it was still cutting sharp.
Honey is great stuff. At least under the right circumstances, it doesn't degrade. Archeologists found containers filled with honey, dating back about 2000 years, and the honey was still edible, and just as good as fresh.
If your talking about the swords from the terracotta army, they're a bit of a different story because they were given a rust proof coating*, they weren't swords that were in use, while sometimes ancient artifacts do come out in good condition this is almost alwayse because they were in a bog or similar situation that protected them from oxygen decaying the material, an open tomb would often leave plenty of air to destroy the treasures within.
*They also suggest that the excellent preservation of the bronze weapons may have been helped by the moderately alkaline pH, small particle size and low organic content of the surrounding soil.
“The high-tin composition of the bronze, quenching technique, and the particular nature of the local soil go some way to explain their remarkable preservation but it is still possible that the Qin Dynasty developed a mysterious technological process and this deserves further investigation,” Dr. Li said.
@@IrvineTheHunter
Wait, are you telling me, that they gave actual swords to the terracotta soldiers?
@@derskalde4973 They had swords, spears, glaives, bows, and arrows, it was the Quin Dynasty, and they were very successful, so they made a huge show for their military monument.
@@IrvineTheHunter
How comes, that in all the documentaries I've watched, that featured the terracotta army, they never mentioned this?
You learn something new every day, I guess XD
But back to your original question: I don't think so. I can't remember where exactly that sword was discovered, but I think it was in the actual tomb main chamber.
5:30 not necessarily, I have plenty of characters who would horde random broken things for a variety of reasons that isn't being up to something, sometimes it's because it's shiny, maybe they just think it is neat
You: The food in dungons will probly be spoiled.
Me: We have a druid with goodberry in our group, sooo...
Also. If equipment is dammaged, I'll just cast mending, or I'll use it for scrap.
I can already see my players comming up with a scheme of buying oxidised coins and using alchemical tools turning them back into copper for profit.